[Mesorah] Davar HaAveid vs. Davar HaAvud

[Benjamin M. Kandel]

Davar ha-aveid is correct.  Aveid is a stative verb, and the Torah
describes the lost object with a stative verb (although it is feminine -
Devarim 22:3, "le-khol aveidat ahikha").  The active participle would be
"oveid".
Stative verbs describe states, not actions.  Other common examples of
statives are "yashein", "ameil", "tamei", "kasher", "meit" (hollow root,
or ayin-vav), "eid", "geir", "hasheikh" (as in "safeik hasheikha safeik
aina hasheikha"), etc.  So "bateil be-shishim" means "nullified in sixty",
even though the English equivalent does use the passive participle.

Kol tuv and chag sameach

Ben Kandel

> I got into a discussion today over the proper conjugation of the latter
> word
> in one of the heterei melacha of ChoH"M.  I had always heard it called
> Ha-Aveid, using the active participle ("an object being lost") but the
> other
> party insisted it should be Ha-Avud, using the passive participle ("a lost
> object").
>
> Google produces sources of some authority that utilize both conjugations,
> i.e., money that he is losing and money that he will have lost.  What is
> the
> origin of this difference?
>
> (Upon further consideration of the matter - and aided by the information
> that I picked up from Gesenius and Wikipedia in writing this post - I'm
> not
> sure that I fully understand the distinction between these two parts of
> speech.  When something is bateil b'shishim, does that mean that it is
> continually actively being nullified, as opposed to being batul v'omeid?
> If
> so, why?)
>
> Thanks and Ch"S,
>
> Josh
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