Deborah
/ˈdɛb(ə)ɹə/
Deborah proper noun: a judge of Israel.
Proper noun
Deborah (plural Deborahs)
- A judge of Israel.
- And Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lapidoth, she judged Israel at that time.
- A nurse of Rebecca.
- A female given name from Hebrew, popular from the 1940s to the 1970s, first in the USA, then in the UK.
- Rapier. Heigho! Deborah! it's an ugly name, a damnable name - the name I mean! - it sounds like Gomorrah! Deb! Debby! - worse still - sounded sharp now I rather like it! - Deborah! Deborah! Deborah!1851, James Brayshay, The Protector of Houghall, Or the Lily and the Rose, Groombridge and Sons, act I
- He hadn't known, for example, that her middle name was Deborah. It was a name he liked: plucky, Midwestern and reliable-sounding. He was willing to bet that if you went through every women's prison in America, you wouldn't find a half-dozen Deborahs.1995, Carl Hiaasen, Stormy Weather, Alfred A.Knopf,Inc., →ISBN, page 256
Forms of Deborah
| plural | Deborahs |
|---|---|
| alternative form | Debra |
| alternative form | Debora |
Origin of Deborah
From Hebrew דְּבוֹרָה (dvorá), meaning bee.
Questions about Deborah
- What does Deborah mean?
- Deborah means a judge of Israel.
- What part of speech is Deborah?
- Deborah is a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce Deborah?
- Deborah is pronounced /ˈdɛb(ə)ɹə/ (UK).
Words near Deborah in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: Deborah (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.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-Deborah.wav.
Cite this entry: “Deborah.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/deborah. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.