Challah

WORD OF THE DAY

challah / noun / HAH-luh or KHAH-luh

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
“Flour was everywhere, scraps of fried potato lined the counters, dishes were piled up in the sink, and I somehow looked less camera-ready than I had at the start of the night, my hair falling out of its messy bun and my cooking wounds announcing themselves even from beneath Band-Aids. I didn’t care, though, because my house smelled like fresh challah, a scent I won’t even bother attempting to describe for fear of botching its essential goodness.”
— Emma Specter, Vogue, 6 Oct. 2022

French brioche, Jewish challah, Swiss zopf, Italian pane di pasqua -- many cultures have their own version of a sweet, and often braided, bread.
—Casey Barber, CNN, 15 Apr. 2022

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 and hallah, and the plural forms challot, challoth, challahs, hallot, halloth, and hallahs 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 or uvular fricative, like the ch in the German Buch or the Scottish English loch.