Word.ws English Dictionary

heter

heter noun: special permission from a rabbi to break a commandment.

Noun

heter (plural heterim)

  1. (Judaism) Special permission from a rabbi to break a commandment.
    • What comes to mind is the famous issue on ZIM SHIPPING - an Israeli company owned by Jews and they tried to get a heter for running their ships on Shabbos.1995 February 3, YOSEF KAZEN, “Petitions, Acceptance, and Moshiach”, in soc.culture.jewish (Usenet)

Forms of heter

pluralheterim

Origin of heter

Borrowed from Hebrew הֶתֵּר (hetér, “permission”).

Questions about heter

What does heter mean?
Heter means special permission from a rabbi to break a commandment.
What part of speech is heter?
Heter is a noun.
What is the plural of heter?
The plural of heter is heterim.

Words near heter in the dictionary

  1. hetcoal
  2. hetdar
  3. hetdars
  4. hetegonic
  5. hetegony
  6. heter
  7. heter-
  8. heteracanth
  9. heteradenia
  10. heterandrous
  11. heterandry

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: heter (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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Cite this entry: “heter.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/heter. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.