Hivites

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An ancient non-Semitic people who lived in Canaan, named among the groups the Hebrew Bible says were living in the land before the Israelites
2. A group of pre-Israelite inhabitants of the region of Canaan, listed in the Old Testament among the peoples the Israelites encountered there
3. The name given in the Hebrew Bible to an early population of Canaan, often identified with Hurrian or Horite-related groups of the Levant

Etymology: Hivites is the plural of "Hivite," the name of an ancient people listed among the inhabitants of Canaan in the Hebrew Bible. The name comes from Biblical Hebrew "ḥiwwî," with the English suffix "-ite" added to form a name for a member of a group. The surprising part is that English readers meeting "Hivite" for the first time are often tempted to link it with beehives, and the connection is not accidental in the way one might expect. English "hive" and "-ite" have been used together to make a playful pun on bees and beehives, so the word can be read as a joke about the ancient people's name. Because the Hebrew original belongs to a different linguistic tradition, the resemblance to "hive" is a coincidence of sound that English speakers have turned into a wordplay.