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Learn Hardcore Hebrew: החוט עובר דרך המחט. - The thread passes through the needle.

Hardcore Hebrew
/Taking clothes to a tailor and dry cleaner
/החוט עובר דרך המחט.

החוט עובר דרך המחט.

Word

החוט עובר דרך המחט.

Meaning

The thread passes through the needle.

Part of speech

sentence

Pronunciation

Course

Hardcore Hebrew

Lesson

Taking clothes to a tailor and dry cleaner

Breakdown of החוט עובר דרך המחט.

Questions & Answers about החוט עובר דרך המחט.

How do you pronounce החוט עובר דרך המחט?

A common pronunciation is:

ha-khut over dérekh ha-máchat

A more detailed breakdown:

החוט = ha-khut
עובר = over
דרך = derekh
המחט = ha-machat

A few pronunciation notes for English speakers:

ח is the throaty sound heard in words like Chanukah or the German Bach. It is not an English h.
ע in modern Hebrew is often very light or even silent in everyday speech, so עובר is usually just pronounced over.
כ in החוט is also the same throaty kh sound here.

Why do both החוט and המחט start with ה?

The prefix ה־ is the Hebrew definite article, equivalent to English the.

So:

חוט = thread
החוט = the thread
מחט = needle
המחט = the needle

Hebrew usually adds ה־ directly to the beginning of the noun instead of using a separate word like English the.

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Why is the verb עובר and not some other form?

עובר is the present-tense masculine singular form of the verb לעבור, meaning to pass, to go through, or to cross depending on context.

It is עובר here because it agrees with החוט:

החוט = the thread
חוט is a masculine singular noun

So the verb must also be masculine singular in the present tense.

Very roughly:

masculine singular: עובר
feminine singular: עוברת
masculine plural: עוברים
feminine plural: עוברות

Does עובר literally mean passes, is passing, or goes through?

In Hebrew present tense, one form can often cover several English possibilities.

So עובר can mean things like:

passes
is passing
goes through
is going through

The exact English translation depends on context.

In this sentence, English might say:

The thread passes through the needle
The thread goes through the needle
The thread is passing through the needle

All of these can match the Hebrew reasonably well.

What is דרך doing here? Isn’t דרך also a noun meaning road or way?

Yes. דרך can be a noun meaning way, road, or path. But in this sentence it is being used as a preposition meaning through or by way of.

So here:

דרך המחט = through the needle

This is very common in Hebrew: the same written word can serve different grammatical roles depending on context.

In החוט עובר דרך המחט, דרך is not the subject and not a noun phrase by itself. It introduces the route or passage.

Why isn’t there a separate word for through before דרך המחט?

Because דרך itself is already doing the job of through.

English uses a separate preposition:

through the needle

Hebrew here uses:

דרך המחט

So you do not need another word before דרך.

Why doesn’t דרך have ה־ on it here?

Because in this sentence דרך is functioning as a preposition, not as a noun.

When it means through, it normally appears just as דרך.

Compare:

דרך המחט = through the needle
Here דרך is a preposition.

But as a noun you could have something like:

הדרך = the way / the road

So whether it gets ה־ depends on whether it is being used as a noun or not.

What gender are the nouns in this sentence?

חוט is masculine
מחט is feminine

This matters because Hebrew often shows agreement in verbs and adjectives.

In this sentence, the gender of חוט matters directly because the verb is agreeing with it:

החוט עובר = masculine singular subject + masculine singular present verb

The gender of מחט matters less here because it is inside the prepositional phrase דרך המחט, so there is no adjective or verb here that has to agree with it.

Is the word order the same as in English?

It is fairly similar here:

החוט = subject
עובר = verb
דרך המחט = prepositional phrase

So the structure is basically:

Subject + Verb + Prepositional Phrase

That said, Hebrew word order is often more flexible than English, especially outside very basic sentences. But this sentence uses a very normal and straightforward order.

Could Hebrew also say this in a different way?

Yes, depending on context.

For example, Hebrew might sometimes use a slightly different structure or verb if the emphasis changes. But החוט עובר דרך המחט is a natural, simple sentence.

A learner should mainly notice that Hebrew is expressing the idea with:

a definite subject
a present-tense verb
the preposition דרך

That is the core pattern here.

Is עובר a real present tense, or is it actually a participle?

Historically and grammatically, Hebrew present tense forms are based on the participle. So עובר is often described as a participle form that functions as the present tense.

For learners, the practical point is this:

In everyday modern Hebrew, עובר is how you say passes / is passing / goes through in the present.

So technically there is a participle background, but functionally you can treat it as the present tense form.

Can I think of המחט as meaning the needle even though the thread really goes through the eye of the needle?

Yes. Hebrew, like English, can use needle to refer to the whole object even when the thread physically goes through the hole in it.

So דרך המחט is perfectly normal in context. You do not need a more anatomically precise phrase unless the context specifically requires it.

Why is המחט pronounced ha-machat and not something like ha-mechat?

The basic noun is מַחַט in pointed Hebrew, pronounced máchat.

When you add the definite article ה־, you get:

המחט = ha-machat

So the vowel pattern belongs to the noun itself. In unpointed Hebrew script, learners have to know or learn the pronunciation from vocabulary knowledge, because the vowels are not written in normal text.

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