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say it: shi-MUH
shema is a noun meaning "a liturgical prayer (considered to be the essence of Jewish religion) that is recited at least twice daily by adult Jewish males to declare their faith". It is pronounced /ʃɪˈmʌ/ — shi-MUH. It carries one recorded sense.
a liturgical prayer (considered to be the essence of Jewish religion) that is recited at least twice daily by adult Jewish males to declare their faith
“as soon as Leonard learned to talk he was taught to recite the first words of the Shema, the creed of Judaism which originated on Sinai with Moses and is recited daily”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for shema come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.