With the Israeli summer now underway, the Hebrew Language Academy used the hot season to clarify two words many people confuse, or do not know are historically related: "mozeg" and "mazgan." The academy said the proper Hebrew term for a bartender is "mozeg" for a man and "mozeghet" for a woman, and noted that the similarity to "mazgan" is not accidental.
Both words come from the same Hebrew root, m-z-g, but they describe very different functions. A "mozeg" pours drinks and serves bar customers, while a "mazgan" cools, or heats, the air and makes a room more comfortable.
The academy traced the words back to biblical Hebrew, where the verb "mazag" originally meant mixing drinks. In the Bible, "mezeg" referred to wine diluted with water to make it more pleasant to drink. In the Middle Ages, under Arabic influence, the word expanded to mean a person's temperament or character, as in the expression "hot-tempered."
From that broader sense of character and traits came the everyday Hebrew phrase "mezeg ha'avir," literally the composition of the air's qualities, which came to mean weather. The academy added that English shows the same kind of historical link, noting that "temperament" and "temperature" also share a common linguistic origin. The post ended with a reminder that the next time you go into a bar, you should thank the air conditioner and order a drink from the bartender.
