Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ ǦRṮM_1 ‘to fall down (and gather)’ ↗ǧurṯūm
▪ ǦRṮM_2 ‘a to gather (after falling down), place of collection, heap, ant-hill; b lowest part, root, base; origin; source; root of the tongue, epiglottis; germ; microbe, bacillus’ ↗ǧurṯūm

Other values, now obsolete:

▪ ^†ǦRṮM_3 ‘a (to take) the largest part; b (pl.) grandees, lords’↗ǧurṯūm
▪ ^†ǦRṮM_4 ‘to shrink’↗ǧurṯūm

▪ All values belong somehow together. However, without cognates outside Ar it seems difficult to decide what was first: ǦRṮM_1 ‘to fall down (and gather)’ or ǦRṮM_2 ‘to gather (after falling down)’. DRS #GRṮM gives both Ar ǧurṯūm ‘petit amas de terre, obstacle; souche, noyau’ and taǧarṯama ‘tomber, choir; se pelotonner, se blottir’ as basic values. – For a suggested line of semantic development, see DISC, below.
▪ According to Ehret1995#285, Ar ǧurṯum ‘root, origin; earth round the foot of a tree’ represents an extension in “diffusive” *-ʦ and “noun suffix” *-m from a bi-consonantal “pre-Proto-Semitic” root *GR-‘to go down’ < AfrAs *-GǏR- ‘to sit’. – Other extensions from the same pre-protSem root: ↗ǦRː (ǦRR), ↗ǦRBZ, ↗ǦRǦM, ↗ǦRDL, ↗ǦRFS .
▪ …

▪ Historically, the vb. and the n. seem to have existed alongside each other.
▪ From the root, vb.s I (ǧarṯama), II (taǧarṯama), and III (ĭǧranṯama) are attested, with II being the most frequent and enduring one (preserved even in WehrCowan1979) while I and III are rare and obviously coming out of use gradually by lC19 (Hava1899). In contrast, the n. (ǧurṯūm, -aẗ) is well-preserved until recently, probably due to its having taken on a modern meaning: ‘microbe, bacillus’. While older dictionaries list ‘germ, origin, source, root’ as the primary meaning, al-Mawrid1995 mentions ‘microbe, germ; bacterium, bacillus’ in the first place, before ‘germ, origin, source, root’.

▪ No obvious cognates outside Arabic.
▪ If a relationship beyond the traditional root system is not excluded, one might perhaps connect √ǦRṮM with the bi-consonantal nucleus ↗ǦM- which has ‘to gather, accumulate, compile’ as one of its basic meanings, cf., e.g., √ǦMD, ↗√ǦMHR, ↗√ǦMʕ, ↗√ǦML.

▪ As a hypothesis, one may perhaps assume a semantic development along the following line:

‘to fall down’ (ǦRṮM_1) > ‘to gather, pile up (where s.th. has fallen down); place of collection, of piling up, heap’ (ǦRṮM_2a, cf., e.g., ^†ǧurṯūmaẗ al-naml ‘ant-hill’ ) (and ‘to shrink’, ^†ǦRṮM_4) > ‘(to take) the largest part’, i.e., what has piled up in one place, condensed portion (^†ǦRṮM_3a), metaphorically used for the elite, ‘grandees, lords’ (ǧarāṯīmᵘ, ^†ǦRṮM_3b) > ‘place on the earth where fallen things landed, lowest part, root, base’ (ǦRṮM_2b, MSA [v1]), hence ‘epiglottis’ (root of the tongue) and ‘origin; source’ [v2] > ‘to take root, come into existence, germinate; germ’ [v3], from eC20 onwards also used for ‘microbe, bacillus, bacterium’ [v4].

–

ǧurṯūm جُرْثوم , also ǧurṯūmaẗ, pl. ǧarāṯīmᵘ

√ǦRṮM

n., and n.f., respectively

1 root; 2 origin; 3 germ; 4 microbe, bacillus, bacterium – WehrCowan1979

▪ As both √ǦRṮM and ǧurṯūm are without obvious cognates outside Ar, and as also the n.s and vb.s seem to have existed alongside each other from early on, it is difficult to decide what was first. DRS #GRṮM gives both Ar ǧurṯūm ‘petit amas de terre, obstacle; souche, noyau’ and taǧarṯama ‘tomber, choir; se pelotonner, se blottir’ as basic values. For a suggested line of semantic development, see DISC, below.

▪ Historically, the values given in DRS – ‘small heap of earth, obstacle; stump, snag, nucleus’ and ‘to fall, fall down; to shrink, contract’ – seem to have existed alongside each other from early on.
▪ al-Mawrid1995 does not have the verbal root any longer but only lists ǧurṯūm, -aẗ.
▪ For the n., the earliest attestation (according to HDAL) is in a verse by the pre-Islamic poet ʿĀmir b. Wahb al-Muḥāribī, dated around 538 CE (as a terminus ante quem): wa-nursī ʾilà ǧurṯūmaẗin ʾadrakat lanā / ḥadīṯan wa-ʿādiyan min-a ’l-maǧdi ḫiḍrimā (ed. M.N. Ṭarīfī 1999), where ǧurṯūmaẗ means ‘anything that falls down and piles up around its root’ (kull šayʾ mā yatarākamu minhu muǧtamiʿan ʿalā ʾaṣlih).
▪ Earlier values encountered in the root, but become obsolete in MSA, are:
– ^†ǦRṮM_3 ‘(to take) the largest part’ (ǧarṯama, taǧarṯama; ǧurṯūm, aẗ); ‘grandees, lords’ (ǧarāṯīmᵘ, pl. of ǧurṯūm, aẗ)
– ^†ǦRṮM_4 ‘to shrink’: taǧarṯama, ĭǧranṯama.
▪ [v4] Monteil1960: 1955 (Académie de langue arabe du Caire, Congrès scientifique arabe) ʕilm al-ǧarāṯīm ‘bacteriology’.

▪ No obvious cognates outside Ar.
▪ Inside Ar, one may see a relation to the 2-cons. root nucleus √ǦM- which has ‘to gather, accumulate, pile up’ as one of its basic meanings, cf. ↗√ǦMD, ↗√ǦMʕ, ↗√ǦML, ↗√ǦMHR, etc.

▪ As a hypothesis, one may perhaps assume a semantic development along the line:

‘to fall down’ (ǦRṮM_1) > ‘to gather, pile up (where s.th. has fallen down); place of collection, of piling up, heap’ (ǦRṮM_2a, cf., e.g., ^†ǧurṯūmaẗ al-naml ‘ant-hill’ ) (and ‘to shrink’, ^†ǦRṮM_4) > ‘(to take) the largest part’, i.e., what has piled up in one place, condensed portion (^†ǦRṮM_3a), metaphorically used for the elite, ‘grandees, lords’ (ǧarāṯīmᵘ, ^†ǦRṮM_3b) > ‘place on the earth where the things that have fallen down landed, lowest part, root, base’ (ǦRṮM_2b, MSA [v1]), hence ‘epiglottis’ (root of the tongue) and ‘origin; source’ [v2] > ‘to take root, come into existence, germinate; germ’ [v3], from eC20 onwards also used for ‘microbe, bacillus, bacterium’ [v4].

–

► taḥt al-ǧurṯūm, n., inframicrobe
► ʕilm al-ǧarāṯīm, n., bacteriology; for the latter, al-Mawrid1995 also gives ǧurṯūmiyyāt (n.f.pl.).

► taǧarṯama, vb. II, to take root, come into existence, germinate: denominative?

Permanent link

http://www2.hf.uio.no/common/apps/permlink/permlink.php?app=polyglotta&context=ctext&uid=d7e8805b-06ff-11ee-937a-005056a97067

Choose languages

Choose images, etc.

Choose languages

Choose display