If we are going to quote from the Catholic Encyclopedia, let us do so in a more complete fashion.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07176a.htm says that:
Hebrew Language and Literature
Hebrew was the language spoken by the ancient Israelites, and in which were composed nearly all of the books of the Old Testament. The name Hebrew as applied to the language is quite recent in Biblical usage, occurring for the first time in the Greek prologue of Ecclesiasticus, about 130 B.C. (hebraisti, rendered by the Vulgate verba hebraica). In Isaias, xix, 18, it is designated as the “language of Chanaan”. In other passages (2 Kings 17:26; Isaiah 36:11; Nehemiah 13:24) it is referred to adverbially as the “Jews’ language” (, ioudaisti, judaice). In later times the term “sacred language” was sometimes employed by the Jews to designate the Bible Hebrew in opposition to the “profane language”, i.e. the Aramaean dialects which eventually usurped the place of the other as a spoken language. In New-Testament usage the current Aramaic of the time is frequently called Hebrew (hebrais dialektos, Acts 21:40; 22:2; 26:14), not in the strict sense of the word, but because it was the dialect in use among the Jews of Palestine. Among Biblical scholars the language of the Old Testament is sometimes termed “ancient” or “classical” Hebrew in opposition to the neo-Hebrew of the Mishna. With the exception of a few fragments, viz. one verse of Jeremias (x, 11), some chapters of Daniel (ii, 4b-vii, 28) and Esdras (Ezra 4:8-6:18; 7:26), which are in Aramaic, all the protocanonical books of the Old Testament are written in Hebrew. The same is true also of some of the deuterocanonical books or fragments (concerning Sirach there is no longer any doubt, and there is a fair probability with regard to Daniel 3:24-90; 13; 14; and 1 Maccabees) and likewise some of the Apocrypha, e.g. the Book of Henoch, the Psalms of Solomon, etc. apart from these writings no written documents of the Hebrew language have come down to us except a few meagre inscriptions, e.g. that of Siloe discovered in Jerusalem in 1880, and belonging to the eighth century B.C. a score of seals dating from before the Captivity and containing scarcely anything but proper names, and finally a few coins belonging to the period of the Machabees.
LOLOL -- So is New Advent going to tell us also that the Syrians called that language they all spoke throughout Mesopotamia "Hebrew" [Hebraisti] as well, instead of calling it by the Syriac word "Aramiyth" meaning "Aramaic"??? How ludicrous is their argument --- in "the strict sense of the word", of course!!!!