ID … • Sw – • BP – • APD … • © SG | 15Feb2021
√ŠʕR
▪ ŠʕR_1 ‘…’ ↗…
▪ ŠʕR_2 ‘…’ ↗…
Several themes with the same root can be found in MSA:▪ ŠʕR_1 ‘hair’ ↗šaʕr
▪ ŠʕR_2 ‘to feel, know intuitively; (compose) poetry’ ↗šiʕr
▪ ŠʕR_3 ‘scrub country’ ↗šaʕrà
▪ ŠʕR_4 ‘Sirius, Dog Star’ ↗al-šiʕrà
▪ ŠʕR_5 ‘password, slogan, motto’ ↗šiʕār
▪ ŠʕR_6 ‘barley’ ↗šaʕīr
▪ ŠʕR_7 ‘rite, cultic practice’ ↗šaʕīraẗ
▪ ŠʕR_8 ‘goats’ ↗šaʕārà
▪ ŠʕR_9 ‘male dancer in female roles’ ↗šaʕʕār
▪ ŠʕR_10 ‘attacks, diatribes’ (pl) ↗šawāʕirᵘ
▪ ŠʕR_11 ‘split; mad, crazy’ ↗mašʕūr♦ Semantic value spectrum in ClassAr (acc. to BAH2008): ‘to know, to be cognisant of, to perceive by means of any of the senses; poetry, to write poetry; hair, wool, fur, to be covered in hair; innermost garment; sign, rites’. – al-šiʕrà is said to be a corrupted borrowing from Grk.
▪ The main items in this root are ŠʕR_1 ‘hair’ and ŠʕR_2 ‘to perceive; to feel, know intuitively’.
▪ Does the latter depend on the former?
▪ Many of the other values derive probably from ŠʕR_1 and ŠʕR_2, but ŠʕR_4 ‘Sirius, Dog Star’ may be from Grk.
▪ ŠʕR_1 : (Kogan2015 Sw#36:) from protSem *śaʕr‑ ‘hair’ (SED I #260). Passim except modEthSem and modSAr.
▪ ŠʕR_2 …
▪ ŠʕR_3 …
▪ ŠʕR_4 …
▪ ŠʕR_5 …
▪ ŠʕR_6 …
▪ ŠʕR_7 …
▪ ŠʕR_8 …
▪ ŠʕR_9 …
▪ ŠʕR_10 …
▪ ŠʕR_11 …
▪ BDB1906 #ŚʕR–1 Akk šārtu ‘hairskin’, Hbr śēʕār ‘hair’, Aram seʕrā, Syr saʕrā, sʕartā, Ar šaʕ(a)r ‘hair’, šaʕira ‘to be hairy’, Gz śəʕərt ‘hair’; Hbr (denom.) śāʕar ‘to bristle (with horror)’, śāʕîr ‘he-goat, buck’, śāʕîr ‘satyr, demon (with he-goat’s form, or feet)’, śəʕōrāh ‘barley’, śəʕōrîm ‘priests [the bearded ones?]’ 1
; perhaps also n.pr. Śēʕîr (designating either the land of Edom, a specif. mountain, or the Edomites), seen by some together with Hbr śāʕîr ‘goat’, others compare ClassAr †al-ʔašʕar ‘the hairy’, i.e. “well-wooded”, cf. †šaʕār ‘trees’. – –2 Hbr *śāʕar perh. ‘to be acquainted with’, Ar šaʕara ‘to perceive’, Aram Syr sʕar ‘to visit, inspect’
▪ From ŠʕR_1 ‘hair’ seem to be derived many of the other values: ŠʕR_3 ‘scrub country’ seems to be the *‘country with the hairy bushes’ (ClassAr has also †šaʕrān with the same meaning). ŠʕR_6 ‘barley’ is obviously *‘bearded grain’ (but the word is old, having PSem, perhaps even AfrAs ancestors, see s.v.). ŠʕR_8 ‘goats’ is probably properly *‘the hairy animal’ (cf. ClassAr †šaʕiraẗ ‘[sheep or goat] having hair growing between the two halves of its hoof, which in consequence bleed’ – Lane iv 1872).
▪ Also ŠʕR_2 ‘to perceive, know (in minute detail), to feel, know intuitively’ may originally be *‘to have knowledge about, or be sensitive for, things so thin/fine as a hair’, and from this is the value ‘(to compose) poetry’, a poet being endowed with deeper insight, a special sensibility for the nuances of life, as fine as a hair.
▪ ŠʕR_4 ‘Sirius, Dog Star’ is perhaps of Grk origin (see s.v.), but it may also be another derivation from ŠʕR_2 ‘to feel, know intuitively’ or directly from ŠʕR_1 ‘hair’.
▪ ŠʕR_5 ‘password, slogan, motto’ is originally *‘sign by means of which one can know, or make known, s.th. or s.o., marker’, i.e., it is derived from ŠʕR_2 ‘to (get to) know’. The same holds for ŠʕR_7 ‘rite, cultic practice’, which seems to be *‘(practice of things that can be accepted as) signs/markers of obedience to God/a deity)’.
▪ ŠʕR_9 ‘male dancer in female roles’, ŠʕR_10 ‘attacks, diatribes’ (pl), and ŠʕR_11 ‘split; mad, crazy’ are more difficult to connect to any fo the values mentioned so far and must, for the moment, remain unexplained.
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