[Avodah] Drops of wine

[Zev Sero]

On 23/06/2012 11:08 PM, kennethgmiller at juno.com wrote:
> In 30:70, I asked RZS where he got it, and he did explain[...] "Common idiom."
>
> Is it really such a common idiom? I haven't come across it before, but that
> really doesn't mean much. It's apparently pretty common to R"n Lisa Liel,
> who wrote, "The words are very clear, and R' Zev is obviously correct.",
> and expounded on it even further.
> [...]
> Over Shabbos, I spent some time looking through my Hagada collection,
> trying to find this "common idiom".  I looked in quite a few Hebrew hagados,
> searching for the quoted phrase, or even any form of alef-beis-dalet in
> connection with the makkos, and never found it.

Ah, you're looking for the wrong thing.  Look back at the message you're
quoting from.  The relevant exchange reads, in full:

you: Where do you have "makos" referring to the spilled wine?
me: Common idiom.

So looking for "A-B-D" in connection with the makkos isn't going to
help you.  RDF's phrase as a whole is not an idiom, it's just his way
of writing.  But in that phrase he uses the word "hamakos" in an
idiomatic way that evidently escaped the translator and RMB.  And yes,
it is a common idiom to use the word "makkos" to refer to the wine that
is spilled while listing the (original) makkos.

(This probably came about in exactly the same way that the bundle of
aravos held during the hoshanos of the last day came to be called a
"hoshana", the "monos" used for the mitzvah of "mishloach monos" came
to be called "shalachmonos", the bread from which we take chalah came
to be called "challah" (or in other places the bread on which we say
brochos came to be called "barches"), an only child who is expected
to eventually say kaddish came to be called a "kaddish", the booklet
from which one reads kinnos came to be called a "kinnah", etc.  I'm
sure RSM can supply many more examples, and also a linguistic term for
this process, and perhaps also a list of other languages in which the
same process occurs.)

-- 
Zev Sero        "Natural resources are not finite in any meaningful
zev at sero.name    economic sense, mind-boggling though this assertion
                  may be. The stocks of them are not fixed but rather
		 are expanding through human ingenuity."
		                            - Julian Simon