Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ ǦML_1 ‘camel’ ↗ǧamal
▪ ǦML_2 (a) ‘(be) polite, do a favour; (be) beautiful, handsome, pretty’ ↗ǧamul- u (ǧamāl). – (b) ‘sum, totality, whole; group, troop, crowd; sentence, clause’ ↗ǧamal- u (ǧaml), ǧumlaẗ .
▪ ǦML_3 ‘gable (arch.)’ ↗ǧamalūn
▪ ǦML_4 ? ‘letter of alphabet’ (?): only in ḥisāb al‑ ↗ǧummal (or ǧumal) ‘use of the letters of the alphabet according to their numerical value’

♦ Semantic value spectrum in ClassAr (acc. to BAH2008): ‘camel, grace, beauty, elegance, to adorn, to make beautiful; to have good character, to be kindly, to ask nicely, to treat well; group of people, sentence, to add together, total, entirety; thick rope’

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▪ DRS 3 (1993)#GML distinguishes eight main semantic values in Sem, out of which however only two or three (nos. #1, #2 and #5 in DRS) seem to be realised in Ar: -1 ‘camel’ (↗ǧamal). -2 a theme with many facets: [a] ‘be beautiful, developed, mature’ (↗ǧamul ); ‘to behave politely, make complete, put together’ (↗ǧāmal ); ^†‘full, fat (body)’; [b] ‘big, long’ (NHbr gamlōn, Aram gamlānā, not realised in Ar); [c] ‘to assemble, put together’ (↗ǧamal ), ‘totality’ (↗ǧumlaẗ), ‘cable, rope’ (^†ǧamal, ǧuml); [d] ‘grease, fat, fondue’ (^†ǧamīl), ‘to melt, liquify (the grease, etc.)’ (^†ǧamal ). – DRS is not sure whether or not also [e] ‘nightingale’ (^†ǧumlānaẗ, ǧumaylānaẗ) and [f] ‘(sort of) palm tree’ (^†ǧamal) should be grouped with #2a-d. The authors also remain silent about the details of the semantic relations within theme no. #2. – Classical dictionaries tend to see ^†‘fat’ (#2d) and ^†‘fatness’ as the original meaning, “hence” ‘beauty’ (#2b), “because, when a man becomes fat and in good condition, his ǧamāl becomes apparent”; from physical beauty then also ‘beauty of character’ – Lane, sv. ǧamīl. -3 ‘anger’ (Te only). -4 ‘to cook a little flour in order to add it to the bread’ (Amh only). -5 ‘sort of boomerang (Akk), sickle (Ug), yoke (JP), hooked (Syr)’, etc. (↗ǧummal). -6 ‘to burn, roast slowly; white freckles on the skin, esp. the legs’ (Amh only). -7 ‘cow without, or with small, horns’ (Amh only). -8 ‘clitoris’ (Gur only).
▪ For Sem *gamal _1 as an extension in * l (for tamed/domesticated, hence ‘weak’ animals) ↗gamal.
▪ For Sem √GML_2 as an extension of an AfrAs biconsonantal root *GM ↗gamal-.
▪ Any relation between ǦML_1 ‘camel’ and the ‘fat, beauty, completeness, politeness’ complex of ǦML_2 ?

▪ ? Engl gamma ↗gamalūn.
▪ (Huehnergard2011:) Engl Gemara, from Aram gᵊmārā ‘completion’, from gᵊmar ‘to complete’, cf. Ar ↗ǧamula.

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ǧamal‑ جمل , u , (ǧaml)

ID 160 • Sw – • BP – • APD … • © SG | 15Feb2021

√ǦML

vb., I

to sum up, summarize – WehrCowan1979.

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1865 Lane gives the value of ǧamal‑ as ‘to collect’ (and ‘to melt grease or fat’).

Hbr gāmal ‘to wean; ripen’, nHbr gamlōn ‘large-sized’, Aram itgəmal ‘to be laden with; be bestowed’, gamlānā ‘large-sized’ – Zammit2002#ǧumlaẗ.

DRS thinks ǧamal‑ ^†‘to assemble, collect’ and ǧamul-‑ ‘to be beautiful, pretty; be nice to, do a favour to’ are related and belong to one and the same multifacetted Sem theme, the idea of ‘wholeness, completion, perfection’ probably resulting somehow from the ‘beauty’ (which in turn may derive from ‘fatness’). See ↗√ǦML.
▪ Ehret1995 (#280) regards the verb as secondary, formed from the noun ^†ǧumul‑ ‘troop; addition’ which he believes is in turn an ‎extension in a “noun suffix” *‑l from a bi-consonantal “pre-‎Proto-Semitic” (pPS, i.e. preSem) root *gm ‘to come together’ < AfrAs *‑gim‑ ‘to come upon, ‎meet up with’ (cf. Eg gmi‑ ‘to find’, Som ǧimee‑ ‘to [bring together in order to] compare; measure’). – Other extensions from the same pre-Sem root according to Ehret: ^†ǧamār ‘crowd, people’ (^†ǧamar‑ ‘to unite for a purpose’), ↗ǧamaʕ‑ ‘to gather, assemble, keep together; unite, reconcile; crowd, assembly’, and ↗ǧamhar‑ ‘to assemble, heap up’ (^†ǧumhur ‘principal part or majority; totality, all; troop, crowd; people, public’, cf. ↗ǧūmhūr).
▪ Any relation to ↗ǧamal‑ ‘camel’?

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► ʔaǧmala, vb. IV, to sum, total, add; to treat as a whole, mention collectively; to sum up, summarize; for other meanings ↗ǧamula.
► ǧumlaẗ, n.f., pl. ǧumal totality, sum, whole; group, troop, body; crowd; wholesale; (gram.) sentence, clause
► ʔiǧmāl, n., summation, summing up; summarization
► ʔiǧmālī, adj., comprehensive, summary, general, overall, total, collective; the whole sum, total amount
► muǧmil, n., pl. ‑ūn wholesaler, wholesale dealer: PA IV
► muǧmal, n., summary, résumé, synopsis, compendium; general concept; sum, total: PP IV

ǧamul‑ جمُل u , (ǧamāl)

ID 161 • Sw – • BP – • APD … • © SG | 15Feb2021

√ǦML

vb., I

to be beautiful; to be handsome, pretty, comely, graceful; to be proper, suitable, appropriate, befit – WehrCowan1979.

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Akk gamālu ‘récompenser, soigner’, gimill‑ ‘acte de bonté, faveur, complaisance, pitié’, gitmal‑ ‘noble, parfait, égal’, giml ‘bœuf au repos, à soigner’, Hbr gāmal ‘être prêt, être mûr (fruit)’, ‘sevrer (un enfant)’, ‘récompenser, rémunérer, faire du bien à qn’, gəmūl, gəmūlā ‘rémunération, bienfait’, Ar ǧamula) ‘être beau, bien se comporter’, ǧāmala ‘se conduire bien avec qn’. Cf. also nHbr gamlōn, Aram gamlānā ‘grand, long’.

DRS thinks ǧamul-‑ ‘to be beautiful, pretty; be nice to, do a favour to’ and ǧamal‑ ‘to assemble, collect’ (cf. also ǧumlaẗ‑ ‘totality’) are related and belong to one and the same multifacetted Sem theme. For details ↗√ǦML.

▪ (Huehnergard2011:) Engl Gemara, from Aram gᵊmārā ‘completion’, from gᵊmar ‘to complete’, cf. Ar ↗ǧamula.

► ǧammala, vb. II, to make beautiful, beautify, embellish, adorn : probably a denom. caus. from ↗ǧamīl.
► ǧāmala, vb. III, to be polite, courteous, amiable : probably denom. from ↗ǧamīl.
► ʔaǧmala, vb. IV, to act well, decently, be nice : probably denominative from ↗ǧamīl. – For other meanings ↗ǧamala.
► taǧammala, vb. V, to make o.s. pretty, adorn o.s. : probably denominative from ↗ǧamīl.
► taǧāmala, vb. VI, to be courteous, be friendly to one another : probably denominative from ↗ǧamīl.
► ǧamāl, n., beauty :
► ǧamālī, adj., aesthetic : nsb-adj. from ǧamāl.
► ǧamīl, adj., n., beautiful, graceful, lovely, comely, pretty, handsome; friendly act, favor, service, good turn; courtesy : perhaps the main etymon from which ǧamula then would be denominative; if this is not the case ǧamīl is a ints. adj. formation from the vb.; ↗s.v.
► ʔaǧmalᵘ, adj., more beautiful : el. of ↗ǧamīl.
► taǧmīl, n., beautification, embellishment; cosmetics : vn. II.
► taǧmīlī, adj., cosmetic : nsb-adj. of taǧmīl.
► muǧāmalaẗ, n.f., pl. ‑āt (act of) courtesy; civility, amiability; flattery : vn. III.

ǧamal جَمَل , pl. ǧimāl , ʔaǧmāl

ID 162 • Sw – • BP 3969 • APD … • © SG | 15Feb2021

√ǦML

camel – WehrCowan1979.

▪ The word (that is also the ancestor, via Grk > Lat, of Engl camel and similar terms in other European languages) forms part of the WSem basic vocabulary.
▪ According to EtymDuden, Europeans came to know camels probably during the crusades.
▪ Osman2002 quotes Brockhaus’ Konversationslexicon (of 1894) where it is held that one borrowing milieu was Asia Minor at the time of Arab-Byzantine wars, but that it came to Europe also both during the Arab conquest of Spain and the Turkish conquest of the Balkans.
▪ Kogan2011: Arabian Sem *gamal‑. – There is no protSem term for ‘camel’. The obvious similarity between camel designations in individual Sem languages must be due to diffusion from an Arabian source. For other terms, cf. ↗ʔibil, ↗nāqaẗ, ↗bakr.
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▪ eC7 Q 7:40 ḥattā yaliǧa ’l-ǧamalu fī sammi ’l-ḫiyāṭi ‘until the camel goeth through the needle’s eye’ (the expression going back to Matth 19:24, cf. Paret1980)

▪ DRS 3 (1993)#GML: Hbr gāmāl, Phn gamal, EmpAram gmlʔ, Nab Palm gml, JP Syr gamlā, SAr (Sab) gml (pl), Soq gímal, Gz gamal, [rarely also gaml ], etc.etc. < Sem *gamal‑ ‘camel’; (Akk (NAss) gammal‑, gaml‑ is a loan from WSem.)¹
▪ Outside Sem: Eg-Dem gmwl, Copt čamūl; Berb (with metathesis, when compared with the Sem and Eg/Copt forms): Taq alġwəm, Tamšq aġlam ‘chameau de selle’; Cush (probably loan-word from Sem): (forms with all 3 radicals) Ag Bil gimilā, others gimil, gimal, gamal, gamalā, (with the first two) Bed kam, (with the first and the third) Sa Af Or gālā, Sid gāla, Som gēl, gāl.

▪ Etymonline assumes that the word is related also to ↗ǧamal‑ ^†‘to collect’, the camel being a principal beast of burden.
▪ Lipiński1997#30.10 thinks the word can be segmented into root plus ‎AfrAs “postpositive determinant” *‑l or *‑r “for domestic or tamed animals”, cf. also ʔimmar ‘ram, lamb’, ʔayyil ‘deer’, baqar ‘cattle’, ṯawr ‘ox’, ḥimār ‘donkey’, ḫinzīr ‘swine, pig’, ʕiǧl ‘calf’, ʕayr ‘ass-fowl’, ^†karr ‘lamb’, naml ‘ant’.
▪ Any connection with Berb (Senhayi alġum, Ayt Seghrouchen alġm, Ghadamsi āḷæm)? – Bennett1998. DRS 3 (1993) assumes the Eg and Berb forms to be real cognates while the Cush ones “seem to be borrowed from Sem”.

▪ (Huehnergard2011:) Engl camel; camelopard, from Lat, from Grk kámēlos, from a Sem source akin to Hbr gāmāl, Aram gamlā, and Ar ǧamal ‘camel’.
▪ The Eur words for ‘camel’ go back to Grk kámēlos which, according to Osman2002, is a direct loan from Ar ǧamal; Huehnergard2011, however, is more reluctant, attributing the word’s appearance in Grk rather to some (unspecified) “Semitic source”, while EtymOnline identifies Hbr or Phoen gamal- as the origin. In any case, the borrowing is likely to have happened in Hellenistic times already, not as late as Byzantine times (as Osman assumes). From Grk the word was borrowed into Lat as camēlus, and from there into the Rom and Germ languages where it replaced the earlier term for this animal, olfend‑ ‘olifant’ (Goth ulbandus, oHGe olpentâ, mHGe olbente, oEngl olfend, “apparently based on confusion of camels with elephants in a place and time when both were known only from travelers’ vague descriptions” – EtymOnline). oEngl camel, perhaps via oNFr camel (oFr chamel, modFr chameau). In modern standard Ge, Kamḗl is attested from C16 onwards. Stress on the 2nd syllable seems to be a learned adaptation after Lat camēlus, while the mHGe forms (kembel, kemmel, kémel, kamel), when appearing in C13 texts, had first shown signs of Germanization (stress on first syllable) (Kluge2002).

► ǧamal al-yahūd, n., chameleon.

► ǧammāl, pl. ‑ūn, n., camel driver: n.prof.

ǧamāl جمال

√ǦML

beauty – WehrCowan1979.

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▪ eC7 Q 16:6 wa-la-kum fī-hā ǧamālun ḥīna turīḥūna wa-ḥīna tasraḥūna ‘And wherein is beauty for you [Paret1980: Auch findet ihr es schön (und freut euch daran)], when ye bring them [the cattle] home, and when ye take them out to pasture’.

↗ǧamul‑. – Cf. also Zammit2002#ǧamāl: Hbr gāmal ‘to deal fully or adequately with, deal out to’, gəmūl ‘recompense’, Aram gəmal ‘to do one good, (or) evil’, gəmūl ‘deed, reward, recompense’.

vn. I of ǧamul‑.
DRS thinks ǧamul‑ ‘to be beautiful, pretty; be nice to, do a favour to’ and ǧamal‑ ‘to assemble, collect’ (cf. also ǧumlaẗ ‘totality’) are related and belong to one and the same multifacetted Sem theme. For details ↗√ǦML. According to Zammit2002#Appdx, Ibn Fāris I:481 suggests a derivation of ǧamāl from the same root as ǧumlaẗ (↗ǧamal) due to a camel’s corpulent structure.

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► ǧamālī, adj., aesthetic: nsb-adj. (For other items ↗ǧamula).

ǧumlaẗ جُمْلة , pl. ǧumal

√ǦML

n.f.

totality, sum, whole; group, troop, body; crowd; wholesale; (gram.) sentence, clause – WehrCowan1979.

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▪ eC7 Q 25:32 law-lā nuzzila ʕalay-hi l-qurʔānu ǧumlatan wāḥidatan ‘Why is the Qur’an not revealed unto him all at once?’

(cf. ↗ǧamala :) Hbr gāmal ‘to wean; ripen’, nHbr gamlōn ‘large-sized’, Aram itgəmal ‘to be laden with; be bestowed’, gamlānā ‘large-sized’ – Zammit2002#ǧumlaẗ.

▪ For a possible semantic dependence of the idea of ‘wholeness, completion, perfection’ from that of ‘beauty’ (which in turn may derive from ‘fatness’), see ↗√ǦML, ↗ǧamal‑ ‘to assemble, collect’ and ǧamul-‑ ‘to be beautiful, pretty; be nice to, do a favour to’.
▪ Related in any way to ↗ǧamal‑ ‘camel’ ?

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↗ǧamala.

ǧamalūn جملون , pl. ǧamāliyūn

√ǦML

gable (arch.‑ ) – WehrCowan1979.

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1865 Lane ‘building, or structure, in the form of a camel’s hump’

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The translation given by Lane suggests that the word is derived from ↗ǧamal ‘camel’. But this would be a rare pattern. The pl. raises doubts about that, too.

▪ ? Cf. Engl gamma, from Grk gamma, from Phoen *gaml ‘throwstick (?), third letter of the Phoen alphabet’; gimel, from Hbr gîmel ‘gimel’, alteration of Phoen *gaml (see above) - Huehnergard2011.

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