Word.ws English Dictionary

negiah

negiah noun: physical contact between the sexes outside of marriage or familial relations.

Noun

negiah (uncountable)

  1. (Jewish) Physical contact between the sexes outside of marriage or familial relations.
  2. (Jewish) The prohibition against this.
    • If I see a young man and woman out on a date in the US, would I not assume that even if they were makpid on kashrut, they might not be as makpid on negia? Or even on pre-marital sex? After all, that is exceedingly common in the US today, and it's even made inroads among ostensibly Orthodox Jews.2006 June 9, Lisa, “LESBIAN & GAY SHABBAT DINNER - 5 JUNE -- RODEPH SHOLOM (NYC)”, in soc.culture.jewish.moderated (Usenet)

Forms of negiah

alternative formnegia
alternative formnegiyah

Origin of negiah

Borrowed from Hebrew נְגִיעָה (“touch”).

Questions about negiah

What does negiah mean?
Negiah means physical contact between the sexes outside of marriage or familial relations.
What part of speech is negiah?
Negiah is a noun.

Words near negiah in the dictionary

  1. negged
  2. negger
  3. neggers
  4. negging
  5. Neghidal
  6. negiah
  7. negid
  8. Negidal
  9. Negidals
  10. negidim
  11. negihama

Source and license

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