keriah
keriah noun: the ritual tearing of one’s clothes while in mourning, now typically the wearing of a torn black tie or ribbon.
Noun
keriah (uncountable)
- The ritual tearing of one’s clothes while in mourning, now typically the wearing of a torn black tie or ribbon.
- In Keriah for one’s father or mother, the garment is rent on the left side, where the heart is.1976, Isaac Klein, A Time To Be Born, A Time To Die, page 29
- The ritual of keriah sublimates the self-destruction impulse by taking the sense of guilt into account and giving vent to it, but the act of cutting is limited to a garment worn close to the flesh.1980, Abraham P. Bloch, The Biblical and Historical Background of Jewish Customs and Ceremonies, →ISBN, page 52
Forms of keriah
| alternative form | kriah |
|---|
Origin of keriah
Borrowed from Hebrew קְרִיעָה (kri'a).
Questions about keriah
- What does keriah mean?
- Keriah means the ritual tearing of one’s clothes while in mourning, now typically the wearing of a torn black tie or ribbon.
- What part of speech is keriah?
- Keriah is a noun.
Words near keriah in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: keriah (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: “keriah.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/keriah. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.