Jacob
/ˈd͡ʒeɪkəb/ proper noun, noun
Forms Jacobs
- proper noun A male given name from Hebrew.
- proper noun (biblical) One of the sons of Isaac and Rebecca, and twin brother of Esau; father of the Israelites (Jews and Samaritans) by 12 sons by 4 consorts, most famously Judah and Joseph who fathered Manasseh.
- proper noun (Mormonism) The fifth son of Lehi and one of the younger brothers of Nephi, author of one of the books in the Book of Mormon.
- noun A breed of multihorned sheep.
- noun (UK, slang, obsolete) A ladder.
Synonyms
Etymology
From Middle English Iacob, from Late Latin Iācōbus, from Ancient Greek Ἰάκωβος (Iákōbos), from Biblical Hebrew יַעֲקֹב (yaʿăqōḇ, literally “May He Heel”), from the third-person singular masculine imperfective form of the Semitic verb "to heel" (with various meanings), in turn from עָקֵב (ʿāqēḇ, “heel of the foot”). Doublet of James, Yaakov, and Yakub.
Webster’s 1913
- noun A Hebrew patriarch (son of Isaac, and ancestor of the Jews), who in a vision saw a ladder reaching up to heaven (Gen. xxviii. 12); --also called Israel.
Etymology [Cf. F. Jacob. See 2d Jack.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “Jacob”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details