hora

also n.

A traditional round dance of Romania and Israel.

[Modern Hebrew hōrâ, from Romanian horă, from Turkish hora, perhaps from Modern Greek khoro, accusative of khoros, round dance, from Greek.]

from Romanian
This word originated in Romania

Put your right arm in, put your right arm out.... No, that's the wrong dance. Let's try again: Stand in a large circle. Put your hands on the shoulders of your neighbors, and let them do the same to you. Then move to the left, stepping with your left foot, stepping over with your right, stepping again with your left, swinging your right foot in front of your left, then stepping back on it in place; and so on. Got it? That's the hora. We have spoken of it in English since 1878.

Danced slow and solemnly or fast and furiously, the hora is the national dance of Israel and has been so since that nation's founding in 1948. But it was not invented there. It came from Romania, where it is also the national dance and has been so at least since Romania was the Roman province of Dacia nearly two thousand years ago. When Romanians want to celebrate a historical moment, they dance and sing the "Union Hora," written in 1855 by poet Vasile Alecsandri. In 1998, when Romania defeated England in the World Cup soccer tournament, fans gathered in the streets of the capital, Bucharest, shouting "Romania! Romania!" and forming large circles to dance the hora.

As the name of the language suggests, Romanian is a Romance language, a descendant of Latin in the Indo-European language family. It is spoken by most of the more than twenty-two million people of Romania. Because it is so remote from English-speaking countries, Romanian has contributed far fewer words to English than its siblings French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian, not to mention Latin itself. But from Romanian we do have two kinds of food, halvah (1846) and pastrami (1936), both via Yiddish.

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Dansk (Danish)
n. - israelsk folkedans

Nederlands (Dutch)
rondedans (Roemenië/ Israël)

Français (French)
n. - horah

Deutsch (German)
n. - Horatanz

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - χορός της Ρουμανίας ή του Ισραήλ

Italiano (Italian)
danza dell'hora (israeliana)

Português (Portuguese)
n. - dança (f) israelense e romena, música (f) para acompanhar a dança

Русский (Russian)
израильский и румынский танец

Español (Spanish)
n. - danza en círculo de Rumania e Israel

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - horah (ringdans i Rumänien och Israel)

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
传统式圆舞, 霍拉舞

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 傳統式圓舞, 霍拉舞

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 루마니아, 이스라엘의 원무

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - ホーラ

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) رقصه شعبيه في أسرائيل‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮הורה (ריקוד)‬

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