To build an army, Hebrew needed help from the Iranians and the Germans

What is the origin of the word "גיוס" (giyus)?

The word "גַּיִס" (gais) appears in Hebrew for the first time in the Mishnah, where it is stated that if you were traveling during Pesach and remembered that there is chametz at home, you don’t need to return immediately — as long as you’re on your way to rescue someone from a “גיס” (Pesachim 3:7). But what exactly is a גַיִס?

The word "גיס" is borrowed from Aramaic — the common language of the Middle East in the Mishnaic period, and the main language that had pushed Hebrew out of daily use at that time. In Aramaic, it means “army” or “military force.” For example, in Aramaic translations of the Bible it is used to translate the Hebrew word "גְּדוּד" (Psalms 65:11). Occasionally, the word is also used to describe a band of robbers (Talmud, Berakhot 60b).

The word’s ultimate origin is disputed. According to the Talmudic scholar Marcus Jastrow, it derives from the root גו"ס, which in Aramaic produced verbs meaning “to touch” or “to make contact.”In contrast, the German scholar Paul de Lagarde suggested that the word was borrowed from the Iranian Bactrian language, from a hypothetical word gaethu, meaning “military unit” — although this exact form is unattested. His hypothesis was based on a comparison with another Aramaic word for a military unit — "גוּנְדָּא" (Gittin 57a) — itself borrowed from the Iranian "gund", meaning “mass” or “group.”The Aramaic word "גוּנְדָּא" found its way into Arabic as "جُند" (jund), also meaning “military unit,” and eventually into Modern Hebrew as "גֻּנְדָּה", meaning a “battery” or “battalion” in the artillery corps.

Then came the proposal of the German linguist Hans Bauer. Unlike his predecessors, who thought that the Arabic "جَيش" (jaish) — “army” — was borrowed from Aramaic, Bauer argued that the two are sister words. He believed that both developed from an ancient Semitic root that made its way into both languages.According to Bauer, this proto-Semitic word evolved from the root גי"ס, which appeared in verbs meaning “to stir, to move, to surge” — a sense still preserved in Arabic in the root جَيَش. This is probably the most convincing explanation.

In any case, from the noun "גיס", Aramaic derived a verb meaning “to assemble into a military unit.” It appears, for instance, in the Aramaic translation of the biblical "תִּתְגֹּדְדוּ" (Deuteronomy 14:1) as "תתגייסון" — “you shall enlist.” Similarly, in Hebrew we find the active verb "לְגַיֵּס" (to recruit) in the rabbinic work Vayikra Rabbah (around the 6th century CE), where it is said of Job that he “began to recruit his troops for war.” Later, in early medieval poetry, we also find the reflexive verb "לְהִתְגַּיֵּס" (to enlist oneself).

Both verbs remained rare until the late 19th century, when they began appearing in Hebrew journalism. Around that time, the noun "גִּיּוּס" (recruitment, enlistment) — derived from "גִּיֵּס" — was coined.It appears in a report from Russia in the newspaper HaTzefirah (January 1888):

“From the headquarters came an order to the chief officers... to oversee the movements of the camps, to arrange regulations for the preparation of giyus ha-chayalim (the recruitment of soldiers) and for the organization of reserve units in time of war.”

The word "גיוס" was printed with spaces between its letters — a typographic signal suggesting that editor Nachum Sokolov had coined it specifically for that article.

At first, "גיוס" referred exclusively to the gathering of people into military units. But as the 20th century progressed, it began to be used more broadly for the gathering of resources — for example, the phrase "גיוס הון" (“raising capital”), first recorded in 1929, which today is ubiquitous in the business and especially the high-tech world, where companies constantly talk about “funding rounds” — giyusim.

Alongside these modern Hebrew verbs, the Mishnaic noun "גַיִס" came to refer to a large multi-branch military formation — equivalent to a corps in English — consisting of several divisions. In the IDF, a "גיס" is activated in wartime to manage a specific operational zone.

Another modern use of "גיס" is in the expression "גַּיִס חֲמִישִׁי" — literally “fifth corps,” meaning a group working from within the country in service of the enemy.This expression has been used in Hebrew since at least August 1940 and was borrowed from European languages, where it had also just appeared. The term originated during the Spanish Civil War, and its earliest documentation is found in a telegram sent in September 1936 by the German diplomat Hans Hermann Völckers from the Spanish coastal town of Alicante. Völckers reported to Berlin about a supposed statement by Franco, claiming that four columns of Nationalist forces were marching toward Madrid, while a fifth column awaited inside the city to attack from within.

Although no such words appear in Franco’s actual speeches, the story spread rapidly. Days later, the phrase’s first plural use appeared in the communist newspaper Mundo Obrero in Madrid, attributing the quote to General Emilio Mola instead. Other papers soon credited other officers — and to this day, no one knows who really said it.

But within weeks the phrase "fifth column" became famous in Spain and beyond — and a few years later, during World War II, "גיס חמישי" became a common idiom throughout European languages and, of course, in Hebrew as well.