Shibboleth

The Hebrew that is transliterated as “Shibboleth” and “Sibboleth” in English could not be transliterated as such in Ancient Greek because there was no character for the ʃ sound. So in the Greek Septuagint translation the first part of this verse reads (back-translated into English): “And they said to him, say ‘Stachys’: and he could not say it properly.” (Translation by Nicholas King, 2013)

Stachys (στάχυς) means “ear of corn,” which is one of the possible meanings of the Hebrew Shibboleth (שִׁבֹּ֜לֶת). Since the change in sound could not be spelled out in Ancient Greek, the translator chose to use a Greek term with the same meaning and then added “could not say it properly.”

In Modern Greek, the Hebrew terms could easily be represented with Σχίββωλεθ and Σίββωλεθ.