There is an all-purpose word for chaos, mess, tumult, or commotion in modern Hebrew: balagan. It passed into my everyday vocabulary when I lived in Israel. For example, my wife and I use it to describe the state of the household after the grandparents have visited and spun up the kids. The word just rolls off the tongue: ba-la-gan. I have caught myself using the word even with people who don’t speak Hebrew, much to their confusion.

Today, I was surprised to see it used in the headline of an AP story in Yahoo! News.  The story is about how the Israeli security establishment views the latest developments in the Syrian Civil War.  Does the use of the word in a headline portend  the passing of the word into English as a loan word?

The word itself is not originally Hebrew.  This article from Haaretz describes the travels of this wonderful word.   It passed into modern Hebrew via Russian to describe the temporary dwellings used by traveling puppet shows. The word’s origin is actually in Persian, meaning a yurt. Passing into English would make it a loan of a loan of a loan word. The word will have changed hands more times than a sub-prime mortgage in 2007.