Jehovah
name, noun, slang ·Moderate ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 A Jehovah's Witness. informal
"I've never had Jehovahs at my door, but the other day two Mormons came to my door."
- 1 A transliteration of the Masoretic pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton.
"2 And God spake vnto Moses, and said vnto him, I am the Lord. 3 And I appeared vnto Abraham, vnto Isaac, and vnto Iacob, by the Name of God Almighty, but by my name IEHOVAH was I not knowen to them."
Example
More examples"We come from hundreds of ethnic and language backgrounds, yet we are united by common goals. Above all, we want to honor Jehovah, the God of the Bible and the Creator of all things. We do our best to imitate Jesus Christ and are proud to be called Christians. Each of us regularly spends time helping people learn about the Bible and God’s Kingdom. Because we witness, or talk, about Jehovah God and his Kingdom, we are known as Jehovah’s Witnesses."
Etymology
Transliteration of Hebrew יְהֹוָה (yəhōwā), the Masoretic vocalization of the Biblical Hebrew יהוה (variously pronounced). The Masoretic vocalization is a so-called qere perpetuum, the deliberate insertion of the vowels of another word than the one represented by the consonant text, in this case אֲדֹנָי (“my lord”) ('Adonai'). Continuing earlier Iehoua. In English, the name is first attested in 1530, in Tyndale's Bible: I appeared vnto Abraham Isaac and Iacob an allmightie God: but in my name Iehouah was I not knowne vnto them (Exodus 6:3). Tyndale used Iehouah instead of Wycliffe's Adonay. The KJV also has Jehovah in this verse specifically, while it uses Lord otherwise. Young's Literal Translation (1898) has Jehovah. The New King James Version (1982) has Lord.
Related phrases
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.