bat mitzvah
/bɑt ˈmɪtsvə/
bat mitzvah noun: a Jewish coming of age ceremony for a girl.
Noun
bat mitzvah (plural bat mitzvahs or b'not mitzvah)
- A Jewish coming of age ceremony for a girl.
- Near-synonym: sweet thirteen
- Synonyms:
- sweet thirteen
- A girl who has come of age.
Verb
bat mitzvah (third-person singular simple present bat mitzvahs, present participle bat mitzvahing, simple past and past participle bat mitzvahed)
- To initiate (someone) in a bat mitzvah ceremony.
- Passing the Congregation Shearith Israel on Central Park West[…], Professor Solanka scurrying through the downpour remembered the newly bat-mitzvahed thirteen-year-old girl he’d glimpsed through the side door, waiting knife in hand for the ceremony of the blessing of the bread.2001, Salman Rushdie, Fury: A Novel, London: Jonathan Cape, →ISBN, page 5
- Though I was bat mitzvah’d, my parents always made it clear that they weren’t big proponents of organized religion either. But being Jewish was still woven into the fabric of my upbringing with rituals, family history and core values.2022 October 1, Jessica Grose, “Teaching My Kids How to Be Jewish, One Plate of Apples at a Time”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 05 Nov 2022
Synonyms of bat mitzvah
Forms of bat mitzvah
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | bat mitzvahs |
| plural | b'not mitzvah |
| alternative form | bat-mitzvah |
| alternative form | bas mitzvah |
| alternative form | bath mitzvah |
| alternative form | batmitzvah |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | bat mitzvahs |
| present participle | bat mitzvahing |
| past participle | bat mitzvahed |
| past | bat mitzvahed |
Origin of bat mitzvah
Borrowed from Hebrew בַּת מִצְוָה (bát mitsvá, “bat mitzvah, someone who has come of age”).
Questions about bat mitzvah
- What does bat mitzvah mean?
- Bat mitzvah means a Jewish coming of age ceremony for a girl.
- What part of speech is bat mitzvah?
- Bat mitzvah can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce bat mitzvah?
- Bat mitzvah is pronounced /bɑt ˈmɪtsvə/.
- What is the plural of bat mitzvah?
- The plural of bat mitzvah is bat mitzvahs.
Words near bat mitzvah in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: bat mitzvah (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-bat mitzvah.ogg.
Cite this entry: “bat mitzvah.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bat_mitzvah. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.