Bibliotheca Polyglotta

1 woman of learning, woman scholar. – 2 (eg., pronounced ʕalmaẗ, pl. ʕawālimᵘ) singer, chanteuse, belly dancer – WehrCowan1979., woman leader of a troupe of women musicians and dancers – BadawiHinds1986

▪ v1 nominalized PA I of ↗ʕalima ‘to know’
▪ v2 from Hbr ʕalmā ‘young woman (ripe sexually; maid or newly married)’ ?

▪ …

▪ v1 ↗ʕalima, ↗ʕilm
▪ v2 BDB#ʕLM-2: perhaps orig. ‘to be mature (sexually)’, Aram ʕᵃlēm ‘to be strong’, Syr ʕālem ‘to rejuvenate’ (certainly denom.), Ar ġalima ‘be lustful’ (denom.), cf. also Sab ʕlm, ʕlmn ‘young man’, Ar ġulām ‘id.’, Phn ʕlmt‑ ‘girl’, Nab Palm ʕlm, ʕlym ‘slave’, Palm f.pl. ‘harlots’, Syr ʕalmā ‘young man’, ʕalmtā ‘young woman’

While the meaning ‘woman of learning, woman scholar’ (v1) is just a PA from the vb. ↗ʕalima ‘to know’, itself probably denom., the value ‘singing girl’, found in EgAr, may be a loan, most probably from Hbr ʕalmā ‘young woman (ripe sexually; maid or newly married)’.¹ As such, the word is related etymologically to ↗ĠLM (e.g., ġulām ‘boy, youth, lad; slave; servant, waiter’) rather than to ʕLM.

1. As already E. W. Lane thought: »There are also female professional singers. These are called ʕawālim, in the singular ʕālmeh, or ʕālimeh, an appellation, as an Ar word, literally signifying ‘a learned female’ but, as applied to these female singers, evidently, I think, derived from the Hbr or Phoen word ʕalmāh, signifying ‘a girl’ and ‘a virgin’, and particularly ‘a singing girl.’ ʕal-ʕalāmōṯ šīr (the title of Psalm xlvi) and nebālīm ʕal-ʕalāmōṯ (in I Chron. xv: 20) should, I doubt not, be rendered, ‘a song,’ and ‘harps’ or the like, ‘adapted to ʕalmāhs,’ that is, ‘singing girls.’ And as Jerome says that alma in the Punic language signified ‘a virgin’, it seems to be probable that, in old times, the most celebrated of the singing-girls in Egypt were Phoenicians.« – Manners and Customs…, London [etc.] 1908: 361.

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