ʔakḥalᵘ أَكْحَلُ , f. kaḥlāʔᵘ , pl. kuḥl
ID 744 • Sw –/14 • BP – • APD … • © SG | 15Feb2021
√KḤL
black (eye); al-ʔakḥal the medial arm vein1
– WehrCowan1979.
Etymology not clear: derived from ↗kuḥl, or a distinct item? Probably the latter. – The ‘medial arm vein’ seems to have got its name after its dark colour.
C6 ʕAntara b. Šaddād 54,16 ʔaḥwaru ʔakḥalu ʔazaǧǧu, 113,7 ʔan yabīta ʔasīra ṭarfin ʔakḥalī (Polosin1995: 413)
DRS 10 (2012) separates this value (as kḥl-2) as distinct from ‘(to apply) antimony (to one’s eyelids’ (as kḥl-1) (↗kaḥ˅l‑, kuḥl), obviously on account of the fact that ʔakḥal often also is ‘green; blue’. Cf. also †kaḥil‑ vb. I (and also IV, V, VIII, XI) ‘mit eben grünenden Pflanzen bedeckt sein’, the f. ↗kaḥlāʔᵘ which denotes a (mostly) blue plant (a variety of the borage or forget-me-not family, Boraginaceae), as well as †kuḥaylāʔᵘ ‘Ochsenzunge’ and †kaḥl pl. ʔakāḥilᵘ ‘ein Grüngewürz’ (Wahrmund). Interesting also the old value †‘sky’ (ibid.). – Procházka2006 seems to take the relation ʔakḥal < kuḥl ‘antimony’ for granted (as did already Fischer1965: 60, fn. 4: “von kuḥl ‘schwarze Augenschminke’ abgeleitet”), and Wahrmund defines ʔakḥal in the first place as ‘wer die Augenlider mit kuḥl schwarz gefärbt […] hat’; but this may only be a secondary phenomenon, a result of semantic interference and/or overlapping. Wahrmund also has the more general meaning ‘schwarzäugig; schwarz’ which is not necessarily connected to kuḥl, and †‘chrysoprase’, which is a greenish mineral.
The ‘medial arm vein’ seems to be called al-ʔakḥal on account of its colour (thus Fischer1965: 284).†
► †kaḥila, a (kaḥal), vb. I (and also forms IV, V, VIII, XI), to be covered with fresh green plants: denominative, or itself the etymon of ʔakḥal‑ ?
► †ʔakḥala, vb. IV = †kaḥila a (kaḥal) above.
► †takaḥḥala vb. V = †kaḥila a (kaḥal) above.
► †iktaḥala vb. VIII = †kaḥila a (kaḥal) above.
► †ikḥālla vb. XI = †kaḥila a (kaḥal) above.
► kaḥlāʔᵘ f. a variety of blueweed: *the (dark) blue one (plant) (?) ↗s.v.
► †kuḥayl, n. tar, pitch (Wahrmund: Erdpech): *the dark black thing (?); dimin. from ʔakḥal, ↗kaḥVla, or ↗kuḥl ?
► kuḥaylī and kuḥaylān, adj.,n. horse of noblest breed: nominalized nsb-adj. and ints. formation, from ↗†kuḥayl, i.e., < *the tarry one, or *(the horse) with the dark black eyes (?)
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