Curious Word: Megillah

Another classic from Prof. U. In class, he dropped the phrase, "the whole megillah." Our blank stares were enough to convince him to explain that it meant something akin to "the whole enchilada" in Yiddish. But Richard had a better explanation, which I also found here.

It’s the Hebrew word for a scroll. In particular, it refers to one of five books of the Old Testament, namely Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Esther, which are read on certain Jewish special days. The most common reference, though, is to the Book of Esther, which is read in its entirety at the feast of Purim.

Though the feast day is a joyous one, the story wanders at great length through vast amounts of detail and it can be a bit of a trial to sit through it all. So it isn’t surprising that the whole Megillah (in the Yiddish from which American English borrowed it, gantse Megillah) came to be a wry term for an overly extended explanation or story, or for something tediously complicated, or an involved situation or state of affairs.

The original scrolls were apparently quite heavy, leading Richard to suggest you'd need a Megillah Gorilla to hold them aloft.

Money.