ḤAdĪth
ḤADĪTH. The Arabic word ḥadīth literally means speech and also new: because speech is created as it is uttered, it is always new. Following Prophet Muḥammad's death (632 CE), people engaged in speech about him so much that the word ḥadīth was eventually reserved for speech related to the Prophet, including his own speech; it then came to refer to the sayings of the Prophet and his companions, and finally only to the sayings of the Prophet himself.
Sunnah (lit., a beaten track) is a parallel word to ḥadīth, as both refer to the speech and conduct of the Prophet, yet the two usages initially signified different shades of meaning. Ḥadīth denoted speech or word whereas sunnah signified actual conduct, or the way of doing something. It was, however, difficult to draw a clear line between words and deeds, especially in light of the fact that the narrations of companions referred to both the sayings and the deeds of the Prophet. Hence the difference between sunnah and ḥadīth gradually faded and they became synonymous. This was further confirmed by Imām Muḥammad ibn Idrīs al-Shāfiʿī (d. 820), who maintained that no sunnah could be proven without a valid ḥadīth, and the view thus prevailed that ḥadīth signifies not only the speech but also the acts and conduct of the Prophet.
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