▪ †quṭrub_1-3 (for details of this grouping see below, section DISC; the following is a concise version of the entry in Lane vii 1885): A certain bird (species of owl; a bird that roves about by night and does not sleep; and hence strix); insects that emit light at night, glow like a candle (B); certain insect that rests not all the day, going about, or going about quickly, or, that never rests, moving about on the surface of water; light, active; [hence, app.] thief who is skilful, active, in thievishness; rat, mouse; male of the kind of demon called ġūl (= suʕlāẗ); young, or little, jinnee | sorte de petits démons, lutins, farfadets (BK); young, little dog, puppy; (certain) wolf (called ʔamʕaṭ, i.e. whose hair has fallen off, part after part, or who has become scanty, or mischievous, or malignant) | lupus glabro corpore (F); ignorant person, boasting by reason of his ignorance; coward(ly) | pusillanimous (F); light-witted | stultus (F), imbécile (BK); thrown down, prostrated on the ground, by reason of diabolical possession or wrestling | epilepsia correptus (F), homme qui tombe du haut-mal (BK); a species of melancholia | melancholy, demoniacal possession (St), mélancolie qui fait fuir la société des hommes (BK); a well-known disease, arising from the black bile, mostly originating in the month of šubāṭ, vitiating, or disordering, the intellect, contracting the face, occasioning continual unhappiness, causing to wander about in the night, and rendering the face ʔaḫḍar [here: dark, ashy, dust-coloured], the eyes sunken, and the body emaciated | werewolf (St). [A more ample description is given by Ibn Sīnā in Book iii, pp. 315 sq. SM states that he had not found this in any other lexicon than the Qāmūs. Golius explains the word as signifying lycanthropia, on the authority of al-Rāzī] | lycanthropia (F), maladie appelée lycanthropie (BK) – Lane vii (1885), with additions from Freytag1837 (F), Kazimirski1960 (BK), Bustānī1869 (B), Steingass1894 (St), Hava1899 (H).Other attested meanings:▪ †quṭrub_4: burdock plant, arctium | bardane, glouteron ▪ †quṭrub_5 (pl. qaṭārib): slippers | mules, chaussure sans quartier
▪ †quṭrub_1-3: from Syr qanṭropos, from Grk lukánθrōpos ‘wolf-man’ (composed of lúkos ‘wolf’ and ánθrōpos ‘man’). Syr shows already apocope of the first syllable of the Grk original, while Ar adapted the Syr form to the FuʕLuL pattern common for animals (cf. ↗ǧundub, furʕul, ↗qunfuḏ) – Ullmann1976. ▪ †quṭrub_4-5: etymology unclear.
Earliest attestations in HDAL: ▪ 653 CE (restless) in a verse by ʕAbd Allāh b. Masʕūd al-Huḏalī: lā ʔulfiyanna ʔaḥadakum ǧīfaẗa laylih, quṭruba nahārih. ▪ 778 CE (male ġūl) in a verse by ʔAbū Dulāmaẗ describing an old woman: mahzūlaẗu ’l-laḥyayni, man yara-hā yaqul: ʔabṣartu ġūlan ʔaw ḫayāla ’l-quṭrubi. ▪ 783 CE (restless insect, producing light at night) in a verse by Baššār b. Burd, on not finding sleep when even a quṭrub would fall asleep: yā bāna, ṭabbuki lā yanāmu, wa-qad yanāmu ’l-quṭrubu.
▪ †quṭrub_1-3: Syr qanṭropos (< Grk) ‘wolf-man, lycanthrope’. ▪ †quṭrub_4: cf. perh. ↗QṬRB_7. ▪ †quṭrub_5: ironical use of †quṭrub_2 ‘roving about at night’?
▪ Ullmann1976: »Rudolf Geyer1
hatte angenommen, daß die erste Silbe des Wortes [Grk] lukánθrōpos von den Arabern als Artikel aufgefaßt, daß al-quṭrub demnach analog zu [Grk] Aléxandros ~ [Ar] al-Iskandar, [Grk] limḗn ~ [Ar] al-mīnā usw. gebildet worden sei. Das ist schwerlich richtig, denn dann müßte al-quṭrub unmittelbar auf [Grk] lukánθrōpos zurückgehen. Das arabische Work hat aber in qanṭropos [Brockelmann1895: [Grk] lukánθrōpos, daemon nocturnus] eine syrische Vorstufe, wie schon Georg Hoffmann2
und Rubens Duval3
nachgewiesen haben. Bereits im Syrischen ist die erste Silbe apokopiert, und ebenso findet sich dort bereits die regelwidrige – wenn auch nicht ganz ungewöhnliche – Wiedergabe des griechischen θ durch ṭ. Qanṭropos ist von den Arabern dann zu quṭrub weiterentwickelt worden, wobei die noch erinnerte ursprüngliche Wortbedeutung die Angleichung an ein Morphem befördert haben mag, das für viele Tiernamen gilt, z.B. furʕul ‘junge Hyäne’, qunfuḏ ‘Igel’, ǧundub ‘Heuschrecke’.« ▪ When Grk lukánθrōpos > Syr qanṭropos entered Ar it must have meant a person possessed by a demon, looking (or believing to look) like a wolf, restlessly roving around at night. From the three main ideas attached to this being – 1 the scary, wolf-like shape, 2 its restless roving about by night, and 3 its possession – a large variety of secondary values were derived in the course of time, all expressed by the n. quṭrub or the (denom.) vb.s qaṭraba (I) and taqaṭraba (II). Semantics may have developed along the following lines:▪ †quṭrub_1 ‘(a certain) wolf (whose hair has fallen off, scanty, mischievous, malignant)’. ▪ †quṭrub_2 ‘roving around by night, without sleeping’: