Bibliotheca Polyglotta

1 to stretch one’s neck in order to see (li‑ or ʔilà s.th.), crane one’s neck (li‑ or ʔilà for). – 2 to carry one’s head high (out of vanity); to leer (ʔilà at) – WehrCowan1979.

▪ In dictionaries of ClassAr often interpreted as a var. of form XI, ĭšrābba, of ↗šariba and therefore connected to the notion of ‘drinking’; cf., e.g., Lane iv (1872): ‘to raise one’s head like the camel that has satisffied his thirst on the occasion of drinking, stretch forth one’s neck to look, in preparing to drink water’. Lane thinks it is »not improbabl[e]« that the vb. derives from šariba.
▪ Freytag1830 would not exclude that it is a form IV of a 4-rad. root ŠRʔB (with id. meaning).
▪ Perhaps, however, ĭšraʔabba ~ ĭšrābba is neither from ŠRB nor from ŠRʔB, but (ultimately) from RBB, cf. Aram šarbēḇ, lHbr širbēḇ ‘to stretch out, prolong’.

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▪ Klein1987 does not mention Ar ĭšraʔabba, but the postBiblHbr širbēḇ ‘1 to stretch out, prolong, enlarge; 2 to draw down, let down’ is conspicuously close in meaning. – Cognates of Hbr širbēḇ, as given by Klein1987: Aram šarbēḇ ‘to prolong, let hang down, let down’ and Akk šurbubu ‘to lower, make low, to humble’¹

1. CAD (s.v. rabābu): šurbubu ‘to relax; to humble, force into submission’.

▪ According to Klein1987, postBiblHbr širbēḇ ‘1 to stretch out, prolong, enlarge; 2 to draw down, let down’¹ is from a root ŠRBB ‘to stretch out, prolong, let hang down, let down’ that is borrowed from Aram šarbēḇ ‘to prolong, let hang down, let down’), a šap̄ʕēl (archaic Š-stem) of √RBB, »yet not in the sense ‘to grow, be great’, but in the meaning ‘to be low’, which occurs only in Akk šurbub ‘to lower, make low, to humble’«.² Should Ar ĭšraʔabba ~ ĭšrābba be akin to these items rather than to šariba ‘to drink’? In this case, its closest relatives in Ar would be ↗rabb ‘lord, master’ and ↗rabā (√RBW) ‘to grow, increase’.
▪ The theme of ‘hanging down’ or ‘letting hang down’ (= [v2] of Š-RBB in Aram and lHbr, present also in Akk šurbubu) returns also in two other words that are usually derived from to šariba ‘to drink’, namely ↗šārib ‘moustache’ and šarrābaẗ ‘tassel’. Are these, literally, *‘the hanging ones’ rather than *‘the drinkers’?

1. In nHbr also ‘to insert in the wrong place’ 2. Cf. CAD #rabābu : šurbubu ‘to relax; to humble, force into submission’.

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ŠRB شرب

√ŠRB

“root”

▪ ŠRB_1 ‘to drink, inhale, absorb; (caus.) to irrigate’ ↗šariba
▪ ŠRB_2 ‘to raise the head’ ↗ĭšraʔabba
▪ ŠRB_3 ‘moustache’ ↗šārib
▪ ŠRB_4 ‘tassel, tuft, bob’ ↗šarrābaẗ
▪ ŠRB_5 ‘(oriel window with) turned wooden latticework’ ↗mašrabiyyaẗ
▪ ŠRB_6 ‘soup’ ↗šūrbaẗ
▪ ŠRB_7 ‘stocking, sock’ ↗šurrāb

Other values, now obsolete or dialectal only:

^†ŠRB_8 ‘doe, hind’: širbaẗ (Dozy)
^†ŠRB_9 ‘palm-tree that grows from the date stone’: šarbaẗ (pl. ‑āt, šarāʔibᵘ, šarābībᵘ) (Lane)
^†ŠRB_10 ‘people, or party, dwelling upon the side of a river, and to whom belongs the water thereof’: šāribaẗ (Lane)
^†ŠRB_11 ‘soft, plain land, in which is always herbage’: mašrabaẗ ; ‘id.; side of a valley’ ↗šarabbaẗ (Lane)
^†ŠRB_12 ‘way, mode, or manner of being, or acting etc.’: šarabbaẗ (Lane)
^†ŠRB_13 ‘tangled and dense, one part above another (herbage)’ (adj.): šurbub (Freytag), šurbubb (Lane)
ŠRB_14 ‘(EgAr, rur) dried mud’: širb
ŠRB_15 ‘(EgAr, carp) to plane (wood)’: šarrab
^†ŠRB_16 ‘to understand, apprehend (a discourse): šaraba, u (šarb).

♦ Semantic value spectrum in ClassAr (acc. to BAH2008): ‘1a to drink, imbibe, absorb; to inhale (= ŠRB_1); 1b to irrigate (caus. of ŠRB_1). – 2 to raise the head’ (=ŠRB_2)’.

▪ ŠRB_1 šariba ‘to drink, inhale, absorb’: from Sem *śrb (or *śrṗ) ‘to sip, absorb, drink’
▪ ŠRB_2 ĭšraʔabba ‘to raise the head’, usually seen as derived from ŠRB_1 ‘to drink’ and explained as *‘to crane o.’s neck, reach out to obtain s.th. to drink’ or ‘to raise the head in order to swallow (of birds, animals, etc.)’; may however also be from a 4-cons. √ŠRʔB, or from an archaic Š-stem of RBB with the value ‘to stretch out, prolong; to let down’.
▪ ŠRB_3 šārib (mostly du.det.: al-šāribān) ‘moustache’: usually regarded as derivation from ŠRB_1 ‘to drink’ in the sense of *‘the (co-)drinker(s), the two hairy parts through which water etc. is imbibed’ or (Gabal2012:) *‘hair that flows down into the mouth’; but cf. ŠRB_2, ŠRB_4 and ŠRB_13.
▪ ŠRB_4 šarrābaẗ ‘tassel, tuft, bob’: related to ŠRB_2 ‘to raise the head’ and ŠRB_3 ‘moustache’? Cf. also ŠRB_13.
▪ ŠRB_5 mašrabiyyaẗ ‘(oriel window with) turned wooden latticework’: probably from n.loc. (ŠRB_1) mašrab ‘drinking place, esp. room in an upper floor’; such rooms often had oriels overlooking the street or garden (hence probably influence of mašraf ‘elevated site’, ↗ŠRF) with niches, often made from turned wooden latticework, in which earthen jars (also called mašrabiyyaẗ ‘[vessel] from which to drink’) were put in order to cool. Semantic development thus probably: ‘drinking place’ > ‘oriel (of a drinking place)’ > ‘wooden lattice work (of oriels of drinking rooms)’. – Cf. however ŠRB_15, an EgAr vb. II for ‘to plane (wood)’!
▪ ŠRB_6 šūrbaẗ ‘soup’: (via Tu çorba?) from Pers šōrbā ‘meat stock, soup’.
▪ ŠRB_7 šurrāb ‘stocking, sock’: from Tu çorap ‘id.’ (< Pers ǧorāb ‘id.’ ?).
▪ ^†ŠRB_8 širbaẗ, pl. širab, n., ‘doe, hind’: etymology obscure.
▪ ^†ŠRB_9 šarbaẗ, pl. ‑āt, šarāʔibᵘ, šarābībᵘ, n., ‘palm-tree that grows from the date stone’: probably akin to ‘water’ and ‘drinking’, thus to ŠRB_1, lit. *‘plant that drinks much’ (?).
▪ ^†ŠRB_10 šāribaẗ, n., ‘people, or party, dwelling upon the side of a river, and to whom belongs the water thereof’: morphologically a PA I f. (ŠRB_1), lit., *‘the drinking (side)’.
▪ ^†ŠRB_11 mašrabaẗ, n., ‘soft, plain land, in which is always herbage’: lit., *‘place/land that absorbs (much water)’; šarabbaẗ , with very rare morphological structure, is said to have the same meaning, more generally also ‘side of a valley’; for yet another meaning see next item.
▪ ^†ŠRB_12 šarabbaẗ, n., ‘way, mode, or manner of being, or acting etc.’: ?
▪ ^†ŠRB_13 šurbub(b), adj., ‘tangled and dense, one part above another (herbage)’: usually seen as derived from ŠRB_1; but cf. ŠRB_2, ŠRB_3 and ŠRB_4.
▪ ŠRB_14 (EgAr, rur) širb, n., ‘dried mud (BadawiHinds), lumps of soil left after ploughing (Corriente2008)’: from Copt čalp ‘mass, lump’ (Crum1939) – Corriente2008 (following Behnstedt 1981:92).
▪ ŠRB_15 (EgAr, carp) šarrab, vb. II, ‘to plane (wood)’: denom. from mašrabiyyaẗ (ŠRB_5)? Or should one assume that mašrabiyyaẗ, contrary to common belief, has nothing to do, etymologically, with ‘to drink’ (ŠRB_1) but with carpentry and planing wood?
▪ ^†ŠRB_16 šaraba, u (šarb), vb. I, ‘to understand, apprehend (a discourse) (still mentioned in Hava1899): fig. use of ŠRB_1 ‘to drink’, i.e., lit., *‘to absorb an idea’?

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See references given in section CONCISE above.

▪ Engl sherbet, shrub, sorbet, syrup, (and also serpent ?) : see Ar ↗šariba.

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