Bibliotheca Polyglotta

Apart from this value, Lane vi (1877) has also
▪ ^†FRT_2: as in farita a ‘to become weak in o.’s intellect, after having possessed ample intelligence’
▪ ^†FRT_3: farata i u (fart) ‘to act vitiously, or unrighteously; to commit adultery, fornication’, to which according to some also belongs (al-) fartanā ‘fornicatress, adultress, female slave’, obviously a loanword (from ?) but related by many lexicographers to √FRT (though others say it is from √FRTN), from which is also the invective ibn al-fartanā ‘son of the female slave that is a fornicatrice; low, ignoble, mean, sordid’
▪ ^†FRT_4: firt, var. fitr ‘space measured by the extension of the thumb and forefinger’

♦ Semantic value spectrum in ClassAr (acc. to BAH2008): ‘1 sweet-tasting water; 2 to be weak-minded; 3 to violate religious norms’

Disamgibuation follows Badawi2008 and Lane 6 (1877). Only FRT_1 is found in MSA.

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furāt فُرات

√FRT

n.pr.

al-f. the Euphrates; furāt sweet (water) – WehrCowan1979.

Via Hbr Syr pᵊrāt, or (as Pennacchio2014 thinks) directly, from Akk purattu, purāt, ultimately from Sum pura-nun ‘great water’.

▪ eC7 The word occurs three times in the Qur'an, always meaning ‘sweet-tasting water’, e.g., Q 77:27 wa-ʔasqaynā-kum māʔan furātan ‘and We gave you to drink sweet-tasting water’ (Badawi 2008).

Akk purattu, purāt, Hbr Syr pᵊrāt are not real cognates since the word is loaned from there.

▪ Jeffery1937: 222-3: »The passages are all Meccan and refer to the sweet river water as opposed to the salt water of the sea, and in the two latter passages the reference is apparently to some cosmological myth. – In any case the word furāt is derived from the river Euphrates (Horovitz, KU, 130), which from the Sum pura-nun ‘great water’, appears in Akk as purattu, or purāt ¹ , and in oPers as Ufrātu,² whence the Grk euphrátēs. From the Akk come the Hbr pᵊrāt and Syr pᵊrāt, whence in all probability the Ar furāt, if indeed this was not an early borrowing from Mesopotamia.«
▪ Pennacchio2014:81 thinks the word is directly from Akk purāt, for phonological reasons. The meaning ‘sweet (water)’, as in the Q, »viendrait de l’une des caractéristique du fleuve«, by semantic extension.

1. Delitzsch, Paradies, 169 ff. 2. Spiegel, Die altpersischen Keilinschriften, p. 211, and cf. Meillet, Grammaire du vieux Perse, p. 164.

▪ The Eur names for one of the main rivers in Mesopotamia, e.g. Engl Euphrates, have all come in via Grk euphrátēs. Jeffery1938 thinks the latter is directly from Akk, while OED assumes oPers ufrātu as the more immediate source of borrowing. As this is perhaps from Av huperethuua ‘good to cross over’, composed of hu‑ ‘good’ + peretu‑ ‘ford’, which, however, according to Kent [Old Persian, p.176], probably is »a popular etymologizing in oPers of a local non-Iranian name«, we are back to Akk purattu, purāt, from Sum pura-nun ‘great water’.

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