Definition of "ayin" []

• The 16th letter of the Hebrew alphabet. See Table at alphabet. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Although this looks strange today, it was a common practice in the transcription of Hebrew words among Italian and Spanish-Portuguese Jews of the period, and it indicates that the guttural Semitic consonant ayin, which is pronounced with a pharyngeal contraction in Arabic and Middle Eastern Hebrew, was still being given this value, or an approximation of it, in southern Europe long after it was lost to Ashkenazic Jews."
• "( "ayin", "yod", "reish") we turn to the Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, with an appendix containing the biblical Aramaic, based on the Lexicon of Wm. Gesenius,"
• ""ayin," instead of "alef" - is actually a great play on words for phyllo dough (that you'd use for puff pastries, usually meat or vegetable-filled)."