Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ From among the 3 values of ZYT listed in DRS, only the first is represented in Ar.
▪ While earlier research assumed that the meaning ‘(olive) oil’ was an Ar innovation—the primary value in Sem being ‘olives, olive tree’, more recent studies would not exclude that also ‘oil’ was an original value.
▪ However that may have been, Ar distinguishes between ‘oil’ (↗zayt) and ‘olive (tree)’ (↗zaytūn).

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▪ DRS 8 (1999)#ZYT-1 Ug zt ‘olive’, Hbr zayit, EmpAram zyt, TargAram Syr Mand nAram zayatā ‘olive, olivier’, Ar zayt ‘huile’, zaytūn, Mhr zaytūn Jib zetun ‘olive, olivier’, Soq zeyt ‘huile d’olive’, Gz zayt, Te zet, Tña zäyti, Amh Gur Har zäyt ‘olive, olivier; huile d’olive’. -2 SAr ziyyit ‘craquer (chaussure)’. -3 Gur zīt, zit, zitänä ‘malade possédé par un esprit’.

▪See section CONC above.
▪ ZYT_1: It is probably not wrong to assume a (W)Sem *zayt- ‘olives, olive tree; (?) olive oil’

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zayt زَيْت , pl. zuyūt

√ZYT

oil (edible, fuel, motor oil, etc.) – WehrCowan1979.

▪ Jeffery1938 thinks that Ar zayt is a loan from Syr zēṯā, following Fraenkel1886 who supported his assumption with the statement that the olive was not indigenous among the Arabs. But the term is so widespread in (W)Sem that such a claim can hardly be maintained.
▪ It is probably not wrong to assume a (W)Sem *zayt‑ ‘olives, olive tree; (?) olive oil’.

▪ eC7 zayt (oil, olive oil) Q 24:35 yakādu zaytu-hā yuḍīʔu wa-law lam tamsas-hu nārun ‘its oil almost glows even when no fire touches it’.
▪ Cf. also ↗zaytūn.

▪ Jeffery1938, 156-57: »The word has no verbal root in Arabic, [the verb] zāta ‘to give oil’ being obviously denominative, as was clear even to the native Lexicographers (LA, ii, 340, etc.). – Guidi, Della Sede, 600, had noted the word as a foreign borrowing, and Fraenkel, Fremdw, 147, points out that the olive was not indigenous among the Arabs.¹ We may suspect that the word belongs to the old pre-Semitic stratum of the population of the Syrian area. In Hbr, zayit means both ‘olive tree’ and ‘olive’,² but Lagarde, Mittheilungen, iii: 215, showed that primitively it meant ‘oil’. In Aram we have zayṯā and Syr zēṯā, which (along with the Hbr) Gesenius tried unsuccessfully to derive from ZHH ‘to be bright, fresh, luxuriant’. The word is also found in Copt čōit beside čeeit and čoeit, where it is clearly a loan-word, and in Phlv ???? ³ and Arm cēt’ ‘oil’, cit’eni ‘olive tree’, which are usually taken as borrowings from Aram⁴ but which the presence of the word in Ossetian zet’i, and Georgian zethi would at least suggest the possibility of being independent borrowings from the original population.⁵ – The Ar word may have come directly from this primitive source, but more likely it is from the Syr zēṯā, which also is the source of the Eth [Gz] zayt (Nöldeke, Neue Beiträge, 42). ⁶ It was an early borrowing in any case, for it occurs in the old poetry, e.g. Divan Hudh, lxxii: 6; Aġānī, viii: 49, etc.«
▪ Nişanyan_20Aug2015: mPers zayt and Arm tsét are from Aram.
▪ Outside Sem: nEg ḏytw */zētu/, Copt ǧoeit, ǧōit, ǧaeit ‘olive tree, olive’ is regarded to be a borrowing from Sem – Hoch1994.

1. He quotes Strabo, xvi: 781, whose evidence is rather for SArabia. Bekri, Muʕjam, 425, however, says that the olive is found in Syria only, and we may note that in Sura xxiii, 20, the tree on Mt. Sinai yields dahn not zayt. 2. So Phoen zt (cf. Harris, Glossary, 99), and zt in the Ras Shamra texts. 3. PPGl, 242. 4. Hübschmann, Arm. Gramm, i: 309; ZDMG, xlvi: 243. Lagarde, Mitth, iii: 219, seemed to think that [Arm] cēt’ was the origin of the Sem forms (but see his Arm Stud, No. 1347, and Übersicht, 219, n.). 5. Laufer, Sino-Iranica, 411, however, still holds to a Sem origin for all the forms. 6. Eth [Gz] zaytūn, however, is from Ar zaytūn, cf. Nöldeke, op. cit.

▪ Lokotsch1927#2187: Ar zayt ‘oil’ > (+art. al-) gave Sp Port aceite ‘olive oil’. – See also ↗ zaytūn.

► zayt ḥārr, n., linseed oil
► zayt ḥulw, n., sweet oil, oil free of hydrogen sulfide
► zayt al-ḥūt, n., cod-liver oil
► zayt al-ḫirwaʕ, n., castor oil
► zayt al-samak, n., cod-liver oil
► zayt al-tašḥīm, n., lubricating oil
► zayt al-ĭstiṣbāḥ, n., fuel oil
► zayt al-ġāz, n., kerosene

► zayyata, vb. II, 1 to oil, lubricate, grease (a machine, and the like); 2 to add oil (to some food): applicative, denom.

► zaytī, adj., oily, oil, oil-bearing: nsb-adj. | ṣūraẗ zaytiyyaẗ or lawḥaẗ zaytiyyaẗ, n.f., oil painting.
► zayyāt, n., oil dealer, oilman: n.prof.
► ^BP#2471zaytūn, n., 1 olive tree; 2 olive(s); ^†3 Zaytūn, or Zītūn, the Ar name of Quánzhōu (or another big commercial town in China): see ↗s.v.
► zaytūnaẗ, pl. ‑āt, n.f., 1 olive tree; 2 olive: see ↗s.v.
► zaytūnī, adj., olivaceous, olive-colored, olive-green: nsb-adj. of zaytūn; (pl. ‑ūn), n., student of the Great Mosque of Tunis: nominalized nsb-adj., from (ǧāmiʕ al-)zaytūnaẗ, Zaytouna Mosque.
► zaytūniyyaẗ, var. ʔaḥad al-zaytūniyyaẗ, n.f., Palm Sunday (Copt. Chr.): nsb-adj., f.
► mazyataẗ, n.f., oil can, oiler: n.loc.
► muzayyat, adj., oiled: PP II.

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