Potiphar

[pot-uh-fer]

noun

1. the Egyptian officer whose wife tried to seduce Joseph. Genesis 39:1–20.

Potiphar

/ ˈpɒtɪfə /

noun

1. Old Testament one of Pharaoh's officers, who bought Joseph as a slave (Genesis 37:36)

Word History and Origins

Origin of Potiphar¹

Hebrew Pōṭīphar, Pōthīpheraʿ, from Egyptian p,ʾdj p,ʾre “he whom (the god) Re gives”

Example Sentences

According to Moore, who has resigned from the commission and taken a pastorate at a non-SBC church, women complaining of sexual abuse were compared to “Potiphar’s wife,” a character in the Book of Genesis who lodges a false accusation against the biblical hero Joseph.

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“You and I both heard, in closed door meetings, sexual abuse survivors spoken of in terms of ‘Potiphar’s wife’ and other spurious biblical analogies,” Moore wrote to Greear.

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“We’ve seen abusers and those who empower them label the abused as ‘Jezebels’ or ‘temptresses’ or ‘Potiphar’s wife.’

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At the middle of the nineteenth century, Laughton Osborn advised, in his “Handbook of Young Artists and Amateurs in Oil Painting,” “There is nothing to be gained by smearing our canvas with a part perhaps of the wife of Potiphar.”

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“If she chases me any harder, she and I will wind up playing a scene from that Bible she reads. The scene between Potiphar’s wife and Joseph.”

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