Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ BRǦ_1 ‘to show, play up o.’s charms (woman), adorn herself, make herself pretty (woman)’ ↗tabarraǧa
▪ BRǦ_2 ‘warship, battleship’ ↗bāriǧaẗ
▪ BRǦ_3 ‘tower; signs of the Zodiac’ ↗burǧ

Other meanings, now obsolete, include:

BRǦ_4 [= DRS #BRǦ-1] ‘to have abundant provisions, have good fare’: ^†bariǧa a (baraǧ)
BRǦ_5 [= DRS #BRǦ-2] ‘beauty of the eyes’: ^†baraǧ . – Cf. also ^†ʔabraǧᵘ (f. barǧāʔᵘ, pl. burǧ) ‘having beautiful eyes’.
BRǦ_6 ‘experienced, able sailor’: ^†bāriǧ(aẗ)
BRǦ_7 ‘rebellious, recalcitrant person’: ^†bāriǧaẗ
BRǦ_8 [= DRS #BRǦ-5] ‘butterskin’¹ : ^†ʔibrīǧ

BAH2008: ‘height, prominence; beauty of the eyes; tower; signs of the zodiac; fortification; (of women) to display their charm’

1. Lane: ‘the vessel, or receptacle, [generally a skin,] in which milk is churned, or beaten and agitated, or in which the butter of the milk is extracted, or fetched out, by putting water in it, and agitating it’

While both bāriǧaẗ ‘battleship’ (BRǦ_2) and burǧ ‘tower’ (BRǦ_3) traditionally have been regarded, by non-Arab etymologists, as foreign words, ClassAr lexicography as well as, recently, also Rolland derive them from the same Ar root BRǦ as also all the other values. The original meaning of the root is given as ‘to be(come) apparent, manifest, conspicuous, high, elevated’ by Lane (^†bariǧa, a, baraǧ), ‘glänzen’ (to shine, be brilliant, glare, gleam) by Fraenkel1886:235,¹ and ‘to deal a blow’ by Rolland2015_BRǦ.

1. Cf. also Gabal2012 who gives the basic meaning of BRǦ as burūzu nāṣiʕin qawiyyin min bayni mā yaktanifu-hū fī ẓāhir al-šayʔ ‘appearance/emergence of an intensely brilliant thing, coming from inside a thing, on its surface’.

In adition to the items mentioned above, dictionaries of ClassAr still list the following:
▪ BRǦ_3 : 1 denom. ^†barraǧa, IV ^†ʔabraǧa ‘to build a tower’; 2 denom. baraǧa u ‘to appear; to ascend (stars)’, II ^†barraǧa ‘to augur s.th. by the course of the stars’
▪ BRǦ_2, 6, 7: For bāriǧ, ClassAr dictionaries give not only ‘experienced, able sailor’ but (hence?) also ‘liberal (ḫuluq disposition)’; and bāriǧaẗ is not only ‘warship, battleship’ and ‘rebellious, recalcitrant person’, but also ‘cuirasse’ and ‘man-of-war’.

▪ DRS 2 #BRG-1 Ar bariǧa ‘avoir des provisions abondantes’; ?dial. mér. baraǧ ‘payer ses dettes’; SAr brg ‘acheter, donner le prix’. -2 Ar baraǧ ‘beauté (des yeux)’. -3 Te bärräg belä ‘être épouvanté’; Amh bäräggägä ‘tressaillir’; Te bärgä ‘se mettre en route’. -4 Syr burgā ‘tour’; Ar burǧ ‘fortin’. -5 Ar ʔibrīǧ ‘outre à beurre’.

▪ ClassAr dictionaries tend to take ^†bariǧa (a, baraǧ) ‘to be(come) apparent, manifest, conspicuous, high, elevated’ (Lane) as the etymon from which all other meanings are derived. For Gabal2012, the one basic meaning is ‘appearance/emergence of s.th. intensely brilliant, coming from inside a thing, on its surface’.
▪ In a similar vein, Rolland2015_BRǦ too thinks that almost all values to be found in this root, even burǧ ‘tower’, go back to one original meaning, which he thinks is *‘to deal a blow’ (porter un coup). From this, the author says, six new values developed (and produced further derivations): 1 ‘to cut’ (couper): ^†barīǧ ‘quartier de fruit’, ^†mubarraǧ ‘festonné’, baraǧ ‘séparation des sourcils’; 2 ‘to chop, split, dissect’ (fendre): ^†burǧ ‘angle’, ^†bāriǧ ‘marin habile’, bāriǧaẗ ‘vaisseau de guerre’; 3 ‘to pierce’ (percer): ^†bariǧa ‘devenir apparent, manifeste, visible, être haut, élevé’, ^†mubarraǧ ‘voyant’; 4 ‘to be brilliant, beautiful’ (être éclatant, beau, briller): tabarraǧa ‘se faire voir dans l’éclat de sa toilette et de sa parure, se parer’, ^†baraǧ ‘éclat de l’œil qui consiste en ce que le noir de la prunelle est encadré dans le blanc bien prononcé; beau de visage; éclatant; beauté des yeux’, ^†ʔabraǧ ‘qui a de beaux yeux’, burūǧ ‘constellations remarquables; signes du Zodiaque’; 5 ‘to leave a mark’ (laisser une marque): ^†mubarraǧ ‘tacheté’; 6 ‘to beat [cream, butter]’ (briser): ʔibrīǧ ‘outre à beurre’. – Quant à une relation entre l’ensemble de vocables ci-dessus et ceux dont nous avons vu dès le début de cette étude qu’ils relevaient du parallelisme sémantique ‘manger’ > ‘être fort’: ^†bariǧa ‘faire bonne chère, manger et boire beaucoup’, ou ‘avoir des provisions de bouche en abondance’, burǧ ^† ‘force’, ^†ʔabraǧ ‘plus fort’, burǧ ‘bastion; citadelle; fort, fortin; tour’, ^†bāriǧaẗ ‘forte tête’.
▪ BRǦ_3 (DRS #BRG-4): Traditionally thought to be from Grk pýrgos, Lat burgus; but this is contested by the ClassAr lexicographers and also Rolland2015_BRǦ (while Rolland2014a still traces it back, via Aram burgā, to Grk pýrgos).
▪ BRǦ_2,6,7: For bāriǧaẗ in the sense of ‘vessel, battleship, flagship’, a Copt, an Ind and a Pers source have been suggested. Some believe also that it is the result of a fusion between the latter and burǧ < Aram burgā < Grk pýrgos. For these, the relation, if any, between bāriǧaẗ and bāriǧ ‘experienced sailor’ remains equally obscure. – In contrast, both ClassAr tradition and Rolland2015_BRǦ regard the item as derived from Ar BRǦ.

▪ BRǦ_2 : According to a number of earlier studies, bāriǧaẗ ‘warship, battleship’ may be akin to Engl barge, bark, barque.
▪ BRǦ_3 : Traditionally, burǧ is regarded to be from Lat burgus or Grk pýrgos, which are of IE origin (IE *bʰergʰ- ‘high’, > *bʰergʰ-os ‘mountain’) and therefore related to many words in Eur langs, e.g. nHGe Berg ‘mountain’, Burg ‘fortress, stronghold, castle’.

–

tabarraǧ‑ تَبَرَّجَ

ID … • Sw – • BP … • APD … • © SG | 15Feb2021

√BRǦ

vb., V

to display, show, play up her charms (woman); to adorn herself, make herself pretty (woman) – WehrCowan1979.

▪ According to ClassAr dictionaries the vb. V is derived from the obsolete vb. I, ^†bariǧa (a, baraǧ) ‘to be(come) apparent, manifest, conspicuous, high, elevated’ (Lane). Rolland2015_BRǦ too thinks that almost all values to be found in the root ↗BRǦ (even ↗burǧ ‘tower’) go back to one original meaning. But he thinks this was *‘to deal a blow’ (porter un coup); in Rolland’s view, ‘to appear’, like also five other main values (see DISC in entry ↗BRǦ), is secondary.

▪ eC7 tabarraǧa ([said only of women:] to adorn themselves in an enticing way, in a lust-causing way; to expose themselves in an alluring way) Q 33:33 wa-qarna fī buyūti-kunna wa-lā tabarraǧna tabarruǧa ’l-ǧāhiliyyaẗi ’l-ʔūlà ‘stay in your houses, and do not display your finery in the way of the pagans of old’. – mutabarriǧ ([said only of women:] those who flaunt their bodies in an alluring way, display their adornment enticingly) Q 24:60 wa’l-qawāʕidu min-a ’l-nisāʔi ’llātī lā yarǧūna nikāḥan fa-laysa ʕalay-hinna ǧunāḥun ʔan yaḍaʕna ṯiyāba-hunna ġayra mutabarriǧātin bi-zīnaaẗin ‘such women as are past childbearing who have no hope of marriage, there is no blame on them if they take off their [outer] garments, without however, flaunting their charms’.

…

See section CONC above.

–

For other items of the root, see ↗BRǦ, ↗burǧ, ↗bāriǧaẗ.

burǧ بُرْج , pl. burūǧ , ʔabrāǧ

√BRǦ

tower – WehrCowan1979.

▪ Traditionally, the word is seen as one of only 17 words in the Q that, ultimately, are of Grk origin, cf., e.g., EALL (Gutas, »Greek Loanwords«): a loan from Syr būrgā that goes back to Grk πύργος pýrgos.
▪ Both the indigenous tradition and Rolland2015_BRǦ, however, do not see a need to derive the word from a foreign source; rather, they regard it as a specilisation developed from ^†bariǧa (a, baraǧ) ‘to be(come) apparent, manifest, conspicuous, high, elevated’ (Lane) or BRǦ ‘to deal a blow’ (Rolland).

▪ eC7 1 (tower, castle) Q 4:78 ʔayna-mā takūnū yudriku-kum-u ’l-mawtu wa-law kuntum fī burūǧin mušayyadaẗin ‘wherever you may be, death will overtake you, even if you are inside lofty towers’, 2 (positions of the sun, moon and planets, constellations; signs of the zodiac) Q 15:16 wa-la-qad ǧaʕalnā fī ’l-samāʔi burūǧan wa-zayyannā-hā lil-nāẓirīna ‘We have set constellations up in the sky and made it beautiful for the beholders’. Cf. also 25:61 and 85:1 (all in the pl., burūǧ).

▪ DRS 2 #BRG-4 Syr burgā ‘tour’; Ar burǧ ‘fortin’.

▪ R. Laffitte, SELEFA Séance 11/12/2014
▪ Jeffery1938: »The original meaning occurs in 4:78, but in the other passages it means the signs of the Zodiac, according to the general consensus of the Commentators, cf. as-Sijistānī, 63. – The philologers took the word to be from baraǧa ‘to appear’ (cf. Bayḍ. on 4:78; LA, iii: 33), but there can be little doubt that burūǧ represents the Grk pýrgos (Lat burgus), used of the towers on a city wall, as e.g. in Homer Od, vi: 262: pólios ḕn perì pýrgos hypsēlós. The Lat burgus (see Guidi, Della Sede, 579) is apparently the source of the Syr būrgā ¹ ‘turret’, and perhaps of the Rabbinic bwrgyn, bwrgn ‘resting place or station for travellers’.² From this sense of ‘stations (for travellers)’ it is an easy transition to ‘stations (of the heavenly bodies)’, i.e. the Zodiac. Syr būrgā is indeed used for the ‘Zodiac’ (PSm, 475), but this is late and probably under the influence of Ar usage. – It is possible that the word occurs in the meaning of ‘tower’ in a SAr inscription (D. H. Müller in ZDMG, xxx: 688), but the reading is not certain.³ Ibn Durayd, 229, also mentions it as occurring as a personal name in the pre-Islamic period. The probabilities are that it was a military word introduced by the Romans into Syria and NArabia,⁴ whence it passed into the Aram dialects⁵ and thence to Arabia. It would have been borrowed in the sg. form burǧ from which an Ar pl. was then formed.«
▪ Rolland2015_BRǦ: »Une certaine tradition étymologique⁶ a effectivement cru voir dans burǧ ‘bastion, tour, fortin’ un emprunt au Grk πύργος [pýrgos ] ‘tour, enceinte garnie de tours’, via l’Aram burgā ‘id.’. La racine IE serait *bʰergʰ- ‘hauteur fortifiée’. La liste de probables apparentés ne se limite pas à ceux-là puisqu’on a également Hit parku- ‘haut’, Skr pur- et purî-, mPers borz ‘haut’, Kurd berz ‘haut’, Arm burg ‘pyramide’, Germ *burgs (Fr bourg, Sp burche, Engl borough, Ge Berg, etc.). Tous ces mots, dont la liste est loin d’être exhaustive, semblent bien être des cognats mais les filiations sont difficiles à établir.⁷ On a certainement construit un peu partout – dans le Moyen Orient et ailleurs – des forts sur des hauteurs naturelles depuis la plus haute Antiquité.« But all this is not necessary, the author finds.
▪ Gabal2012 I:101, who defines the basic meaning of the Ar root BRǦ as ‘appearance/emergence of s.th. intensely brilliant from the inside of a thing on its surface’ (burūz nāṣiʕin qawiyyin min bayni mā yaktanifu-hū fī ẓāhir al-šayʔ), thinks that towers (of a city-wall, etc.) are called burūǧ because of the prominence, whiteness and height.

1. So Fraenkel, Fremdw, 235, against Freytag and Rodiger, who claim that it is a direct borrowing from [Grk] pýrgos. 2. But see the discussion Krauss, Griechische Lehnwörter, ii: 143. 3. Müller in WZKM, 1: 28. 4. Vollers in ZDMG, 51: 312. 5. The Arm bowrgn [sic!] came probably through the Aramaic also. Cf. Hübschmann, Arm. Gramm, i: 393; Brockelmann in ZDMG, 47: 2. 6. Voir notamment Jeffery1938: 78. 7. Dolgopolsky2002#243 does not connect Ar burǧ < Grk pýrgos and the IE forms, but rather sees IE, Berb, Cush and Ar related; he puts together [Berb] Ahag burǵət ‘être soulevé, se soulever’, ETwl, Ty bъrgъt ‘être soulevé’, Ghad bəržēd ‘to stand up suddenly’,[Cush] Bj birga ‘high’, [EC] Or borgi ‘eminence, hill (Anhöhe, Hügel)’, adj. borgi ‘rising, eminent; erhaben, ansteigend’, Rn bū́r ‘big’, Som būr ‘mountain, bare-topped hill’, būran ‘stout’, būrān ‘stoutness’, [Sem] Gz √bgr (metath.) G of ‘to grow, become physically developed’, […] and IE *bʰergʰ- ‘high’(>*bʰergʰ-os ‘mountain’, > nPers borz ‘height, tallness; tall’, oLat forctus, Lat fortis ‘strong’, Celt *brig- ‘hill, high’, Got baírgahei ‘Gebirgsgegend’, oNo bjarg, berg, Dan bjerg, nNo, Swed, oHGe, oSax berg, nHGe Berg ‘mountain’; oNo borg ‘a height; fortress, city’, Got baurgs ‘Stadt, Turm’, Du borg, borcht, oSax, oHGe burg ‘castle, town; stronghold’, nHGe Burg ‘fortress, stronghold, castle’; Slav *bergъ ‘bank, steep slope’, Cz břeh ‘Ufer, Rand’, Pol brzeg, Ru Ukr bereg ‘bank, coast, shore’; Hit parku- ‘high’, park-, parkiya- ‘to raise, rise’ – all from a hypothetical Nostr *biʔ˅r˅gE ‘high, tall’.

▪ See DISC above.

► burǧ al-ḥamām, n., pigeon house, dovecot
► burǧ al-miyāh, n., water tower

For other items of the root, see ↗BRǦ, ↗tabarraǧa, ↗bāriǧaẗ.

bāriǧaẗ بارِجة , pl. bawāriǧᵘ

√BRǦ

n.f.

1 warship, battleship; 2 barge – WehrCowan1979.

▪ While earlier research tried to trace this word back, or at least somehow link it, to Ind, Pers, Copt, or m/lLat origins, ClassAr lexicographical tradition as well as Rolland2015_BRǦ stick to the Ar root ↗BRǦ, see DISC below.

▪ …

…

▪ Rolland2014a#bāriǧaẗ ‘cuirassé, vaisseau amiral; forte tête’: »L’origine de ce mot est aussi obscure que celle des formes du lLat barca et du mLat barga qui sont à l’origine des Fr barque et Engl barge. Peut-être vient-il, come on l’a supposé pour ce dernier, du Copt bari via le Grk bâris ‘espèce de bateau plat utilisé en Égypte’, ou d’un autre bâris signifiant ‘domaine, grande maison fortifiée’ (Chantraine).⁸ Dozy le croit issu, après altération, d’un mot Ind bīrah ‘barque’. À moins qu’il ne vienne du Pers bār-gāh ‘cour royale, palais; ventre des femelles d’animaux’, ou qu’il ait quelque rapport avec ↗burǧ […]. Peut-être est-il enfin le résultat d’une fusion de tous ces éventuels étymons⁹ . Reig est le seul à donner le sens figuré de ‘forte tête’. Quant à un éventuel rapport avec bāriǧ ‘marin expérimenté’, donné par certains auteurs (dont Belot), il est possible, mais comme nous ignorons l’origine de ce dernier mot, cela ne nous avance guère.«
▪ Rolland2015_BRǦ: »nous faisons l’hypothese que les vocables burǧ ‘angle’, bāriǧ ‘marin habile’ et bāriǧaẗ ‘vaisseau de guerre’ relèvent… d’un sens disparu ‘couper, fendre’ qu’aura eu jadis une forme verbale de la racine √BRǦ.«
▪ Cf. also Gabal2012 I:101 who defines the basic meaning of the Ar root BRǦ as ‘appearance/emergence of s.th. intensely brilliant from the inside of a thing on its surface’ (burūz nāṣiʕin qawiyyin min bayni mā yaktanifu-hū fī ẓāhir al-šayʔ) and thinks that big ships are called bawāriǧᵘ because they appear so prominently on the surface of water, attracting attention through their bigness and height.

8. Crum1939 gives Copt baare ‘? boat, barge’ »cf. ? βᾶρις ‘an Egyptian boat’«. 9. … et peut-être est-il alors lui-même le chaînon manquant vers le lLat barca.

▪ If there should be any relation between Ar bāriǧaẗ and m/lLat words for small vessels, then bāriǧaẗ is akin to Engl barge, »c. 1300, ‘small seagoing vessel with sails’, from oFr barge, oProv barca, from mLat barga, perhaps from Celt, or perhaps from Lat *barica, from Grk baris ‘Egyptian boat’, from Copt bari ‘small boat’«, and bark ‘any small ship’, »eC15, from mFr barque (C15), from lLat barca (c. 400), probably cognate with vulgLat *barica (see barge). More precise sense of ‘three-masted ship’ (C17) often is spelled barque to distinguish it« – EtymOnline.

For other items of the root, see ↗BRǦ, ↗tabarraǧa, ↗burǧ.

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