tzfardea

The Hebrew word for "frog", צְפַרְדֵּעַ tzfardea, appears 13 times in the Tanakh. All of them are related to the plague in Egypt. Eleven of them are in the book of Shemot during the narrative of that plague, and two are from separate chapters of Tehillim recounting the plagues - Tehillim 78:45 and Tehillim 105:30.Klein provides the following etymology:Related to JAram. אוּרְדּעָא, עוּרדְּעָא, Syr. אוּרְדְּעָא, Arab. ḍafda‘, ḍifdi‘ (= frog).He also points to his entry for the verb ערדע:to croak; lit.: ‘to make the sound of the frog’. [From Aram. עֻרדּעָא (= frog), which is related to Heb. צְפַרְדֵּע.]While Klein doesn't say it explicitly, many scholars claim that the origin of tzfardea is ultimately onomatopoeic - it sounds like the sound of a frog croaking (for example, see Encyclopedia Mikrait, entry צפרדע). This is more clearly seen in the Aramaic form urda or the Arabic form dafda, which both sound like a frog. The assumption is that Hebrew might have added a consonant to the…