How do you pronounce behemoth?

The recorded pronunciation is /bəˈhi(ː).məθ/.

Where does behemoth come from?

It is traced to Middle English.

/bəˈhi(ː).məθ/

Word Rarity Rare

Frequency: 2.97 in modern English

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noun

A great and mighty beast which God shows to Job in Job 40:15–24.

noun

noun

"⸿ Beholde now Behemoth which I made with thee, hee eateth graſſe as an oxe. Loe now, his ſtrength is in his loynes, and his force is in the nauell of his belly. Hee moueth his taile like a Cedar: the ſinewes of his ſtones are wrapt together. His bones are as ſtrong pieces of braſſe: his bones are like barres of iron."
"Next she doused the smouldering troll with the contents of the restaurant's fire extinguisher, hoping the icy powder wouldn't revive the sleeping behemoth."
"The diehards who did turn out were at least rewarded with a first sight of Jon Parkin, the behemoth striker signed from Preston, who scored a stunning goal on his debut at Norwich last weekend."
"The wide access corridors passed slowly, the conduits and pipes like the circulatory system of some vast planetary behemoth."
"We are the workers who built Alphabet. We write code, clean offices, serve food, drive buses, test self-driving cars and do everything needed to keep this behemoth running."
"Hiei now loomed into the action, causing the leading U.S. destroyers to scatter before the oncoming behemoth lest they be run down."

From Middle English behemoth, bemoth, from Late Latin behemoth, from Hebrew בְּהֵמוֹת (behemót). Most likely, the Hebrew word is an intensive plural of בְּהֵמָה (behemá, “beast”), from Proto-Semitic (compare Ge'ez ብህመ (bəhmä, “to be dumb, to be speechless”), Arabic ب ه م (b h m)). Some have instead suggested a borrowing from a hypothetical Egyptian pA-i-H-E1-mw (*pꜣ-jḥ-mw, “hippopotamus”, literally “the ox of the water”), from pꜣ (“definite article”) + jḥ (“ox, cattle”) + mw (“water”) in a direct genitive construction (for the pronunciation, compare the later Coptic descendants ⲡ- (p-) + ⲉϩⲉ (ehe) + ⲙⲟⲟⲩ (moou)); this, however, suffers from problems such as the lack of attestation of the supposed etymon, and there seems little reason to prefer it to the intensive plural explanation.

behemoths (plural)

behemothian behemothic

leviathan