"Hamayvin yavin" is a marvelous and
recursively meaningless
Hebrew idiom, literally "The one who understands will understand". It's often used to end an explanation while it is still
cryptic, or at least before it becomes
overbearing. It can also be used to exclude the
clueless from a
converstation or a
lecture: I don't need to go on, I've been perfectly clear, and besides, hamayvin yavin.
The best use of this phrase ever is in the Biblical commentary of the 11th century
Spanish Biblical
exegite Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra. Ibn Ezra was foremeost a
grammarian, and his readings of the Bible led him to conclude that its constant variations of
language could be the result of
multiple authorship. However, he didn't dare proclaim this openly, so within his commentary on the Bible, whenever he approached a controversial
insight, he left his point unclear and simply concluded, hamayvin yavin.
Update: In response to
TheLady, I know that the word hamayvin means "the understander" and not "the one who understands," but I think that the phrase is nonetheless recursive, or at least
truistic, insofar as it consists of two words built on the same root. On a tenuously related note, the Hebrew word mayvin is the same as the
Yiddish word
maven, meaning an expert.