Challah

WORD OF THE DAY

CHALLAH \ KHAH-luh \ noun

Definition
: egg-rich yeast-leavened bread that is usually braided or twisted before baking and is traditionally eaten by Jews on the Sabbath and holidays

Examples
My father made a blessing over the challah before it was broken and passed around the Shabbat table.

"The table was graced with the latkes and doughnuts that mark the Jewish holiday, but also featured brisket, challah and tzimmes…."
— Deanna Fox, The Times-Union (Albany, New York), 31 Dec. 2015

Did You Know?
When English speakers first borrowed challah from Yiddish, they couldn't quite settle on a single spelling, so the word showed up in several forms; challah, challa, hallah, and the plural forms challoth, challot, halloth, and hallot were all common enough to merit inclusion in Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged when it was released in 1961.
Today, challah and the anglicized plural challahs are the variants that are usually encountered by English speakers. The initial ch of challah is frequently pronounced as a velar fricative, like the ch in the German Buch or the Scottish English loch.