Mazal Tov

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mazal Tov (Hebrew: מזל טוב‎ - Mazel tov) literally means "good luck/fortune" in Hebrew and has been incorporated into Yiddish, and is now used in English as well. It is often used in place of "congratulations."

The expression comes from the Mishnaic Hebrew mazzāl, meaning "constellation" or "destiny." This in turn is thought to have derived from the Akkadian language manzaltu, mazzaztum, "position of a star," from izuzzu, "to stand." Adding the word tôb, meaning "good," a direct English translation would be "good destiny" or "good fortune." [1]

Like other blessings it is often said frequently and sometimes loudly at Jewish celebrations. It is commonly used within the Jewish community.

[edit] See also

List of English words of Yiddish origin

This page has been transwikied to Wiktionary.

Because this article has content useful to Wikipedia's sister project Wiktionary, it has been copied to there, and its dictionary counterpart can be found at either Wiktionary:Transwiki:Mazal Tov or Wiktionary:Mazal Tov. It should no longer appear in Category:Copy to Wiktionary and should not be re-added there.
Wikipedia is not a dictionary, and if this article cannot be expanded beyond a dictionary definition, it should be tagged for deletion. If it can be expanded into an article, please do so and remove this template.
Note that {{vocab-stub}} is deprecated. If {{vocab-stub}} was removed when this article was transwikied, and the article is deemed encyclopedic, there should be a more suitable category for it.