🔼The name Laadah: Summary
- Meaning
- Order, Festival
- Weak Swallower, Blabbermouth
- Etymology
- Perhaps from some foreign language.
- From (1) the verb לוע (lua'), to swallow or to talk wildly, and (2) the verb דוה (dawa), to be sick or weak.
🔼The name Laadah in the Bible
Laadah is a man from Judah. He's named only once, in 1 Chronicles 4:21.
🔼Etymology and meaning of the name Laadah
It's unclear where the name Laadah might have come from. Jones' Dictionary of Old Testament Proper Names assumes an unused root לעד (l'd) that exists in Arabic, where it means to put in order, and renders the name Order. NOBSE Study Bible Name List reads Festival, for unclear reasons.
For want of a clearer etymology, the name Laadah may also be a compound of two words. The first part may come from the root cluster לוע (lua'), meaning to swallow or to talk wildly:
לעע
The verb לעע (la'a) means to pass the throat wildly — either in the sense of to talk wildly or to swallow down. This verb also occurs in the form לוע (lua'). Noun לע (lo'a) means throat.
The second part of the name Laadah could be construed to come from the verb דוה (dawa), meaning to be sick or weak:
דוה
The verb דוה (dawa) means to be ill. Noun דוי (deway) means illness. Adjectives דוה (daweh) and דוי (dawway) mean faint. Noun מדוה (madweh) means disease.
This core meaning of this verb probably has to do with a flowing of fluids, and the observation that "someone was ill" literally conveyed that "someone had the flows." The noun דיו (deyo) means ink, which at first glance appears to be due to the fluidic nature of ink. But ink was hardly the only fluid, and this word appears to rather stem from the notion that a solitary human is woefully weak and man's strength lies in his network, which in turn is strengthened both by correspondence and by the preservation of man's collective wisdom in his library.
This curiously connects writing to menstruating (literally "the flow"), which in turn relates the need for written revelation to mankind's failure to conceive; two issues which will both be remedied when the Word is fully revealed within mankind.
That way the name Laadah would mean something like Blabbermouth or Barf Boy.