You are here: BP HOME > ARAB > Etymological Dictionary of Arabic > fulltext
Etymological Dictionary of Arabic

Choose languages

Choose images, etc.

Choose languages
Choose display
  • Enable images
  • Enable footnotes
    • Show all footnotes
    • Minimize footnotes
Search-help
Choose specific texts..
    Click to Expand/Collapse Option Complete text
Click to Expand/Collapse OptionEtymArab
Click to Expand/Collapse Optionʔ
Click to Expand/Collapse Optionbāʔ
Click to Expand/Collapse Optiontāʔ
Click to Expand/Collapse Optionṯāʔ
Click to Expand/Collapse Optionǧīm
Click to Expand/Collapse Optionḥāʔ
Click to Expand/Collapse Optionḫāʔ
Click to Expand/Collapse Optiondāl
Click to Expand/Collapse Optionḏāl
Click to Expand/Collapse Optionrāʔ
Click to Expand/Collapse Optionzāy
Click to Expand/Collapse Optionsīn
Click to Expand/Collapse Optionšīn
Click to Expand/Collapse Optionṣād
Click to Expand/Collapse Optionḍād
Click to Expand/Collapse Optionṭāʔ
Click to Expand/Collapse Optionẓāʔ
Click to Expand/Collapse Optionʕayn
Click to Expand/Collapse Optionġayn
Click to Expand/Collapse Optionfāʔ
Click to Expand/Collapse Optionqāf
Click to Expand/Collapse Optionkāf
Click to Expand/Collapse Optionlām
Click to Expand/Collapse Optionmīm
Click to Expand/Collapse Optionnūn
Click to Expand/Collapse Optionhāʔ
Click to Expand/Collapse Optionwāw
Click to Expand/Collapse Optionyāʔ
KNF كنف 
ID … • Sw – • BP – • APD … • © SG | 15Feb2021
√KNF 
“root” 
▪ KNF_1 ‘wing; side, flank; shadow, shelter; to protect’ ↗kanaf
▪ KNF_2 ‘vermicelli baked in sugar’ ↗kunāfaẗ
▪ KNF_3 ‘water closet, toilet’ ↗kanīf
 
▪ … 
– 
DRS 10 (2012)#KNP–1 Akk kapp‑, Ug knp ‘aile’, Hbr kānāp, JP kanpā, Syr kenᵉpā ‘aile, bord’, Ar kanaf, Sab Qat knf ‘côté, direction’, Gz Te Amh Arg kənf, Tñakənfi, Gur kanfa ‘aile’. –2 Hbr niknap ‘se cacher’; ? Ar ĭktanafa ‘entourer, encercler, cerner’. –3 MġrAr knīf ‘lieux d’aisance, latrines’; ? ChadAr kanīfa ‘cimetière’. –4 Soq kinefeh ‘tresse, natte’. –5 Te känfa ‘être difficile, pointilleux’ 
▪ From the five values given in DRS, three are represented in Ar.
▪ However, the entry in DRS seems a bit strange:
- It does not have the value ‘vermicelli pastry, kunāfa ’.
- It does not have the ClassAr value (no longer MSA) ‘bag, pouch, knapsack’ (kinf), cf. Ullmann WKAS.
- It classifies the regular (ClassAr and) MSA value ‘lavatory, latrine, toilet, privy’ as specifically MġrAr.
- It separates the value ‘to surround, enclose, etc.’ from ‘shelter, to protect’.
▪ In contrast, the present entry groups ‘to surround, enclose, etc.’ together with ‘shelter, to protect’ as one value, treats ‘toilet’ as a current MSA item, and adds ‘kunāfaẗ’.
▪ ‘toilet’ (KNF_3) is originally *‘the sheltered place’, a specialised meaning of a quasi-PP from vb. I. In ClassAr, the original meaning is still attested: Ullmann WKAS gives ‘surrounding, covering, protecting (of a shield)’, ‘enclosure, pen, fold, paddock, barricade (of shrubbery)’, ‘lavatory, closet, latrine, privy’. 
kanafeh, kenafeh, knafeh, kunafah, kunafeh, kunefe, etc. ↗kunāfaẗ
– 
kanaf كَنَف , pl. ʔaknāf 
ID … • Sw – • BP – • APD … • © SG | 15Feb2021
√KNF 
n. 
1 wing. – 2 side, flank. – 3 shadow, shelter, pale, fold, bosom – WehrCowan1979. 
From protSem *kanap‑ ‘wing’. 
▪ The original meaning is clearly ‘wing’.
▪ From there, metaphorical use (‘the "wings" of the night’, or ‘▪ … of the sun, heat’) is attested already in early poetry – Ullmann WKAS.
▪ [v2] and [v3] seem to be semantic extensions from ‘wing’.

▪ 
DRS 10 (2012)#KNP–1 Akk kapp‑, Ug knp ‘aile’, Hbr kānāp, JP kanpā, Syr kenᵉpā ‘aile, bord’, Ar kanaf, Sab Qat knf ‘côté, direction’, Gz Te Amh Arg kənf, Tñakənfi, Gur kanfa ‘aile’. –2 Hbr niknap ‘se cacher’; ? Ar ĭktanafa ‘entourer, encercler, cerner’. 
DRS seems to hesitate to group the value ‘to surround, encircle, etc.’ together with ‘side, wing’. But it is not obvious why one should not do so.
▪ So also Ullmann, WKAS, who (for vb. I) separates the values 1. (kanafa, u, kanf) ‘to surround, enclose; to protect, guard’, and 2. (kanafa, u i, kanf, kunūf) ‘to erect, build an enclosure, a pen’.
▪ Kogan2011 reconstructs Sem *kanap‑ ‘wing’. 
– 
fī kanaf…, prep., under cover of…, in an atmosphere of…
ʕāša fī kanafi-hī, vb., he lived under his wing or his protection.
fī ʔaknāfi-hī, adv., under his aegis, under his sponsorship.

kanafa, u (kanf), vb. I, to guard, protect; to fence in, hedge, provide with an enclosure; to surround; to help, assist: denom. (*to spread a protecting wing over…; *to set up a "wing" = screen)
kānafa, vb. III; and ʔaknafa, vb. IV, to shelter, protect, help, assist: assoc. (III) and denom. (IV).
ĭktanafa, vb. VIII, to surround (on both sides), enclose, embrace; to encircle, encompass: (auto-)benefactive (*to take a wing as protection for o.s. or another).

kanīf, pl. kunuf, n., water closet, toilet; public lavatory: pseudo-PP (*the enclosed, fenced place)? – See ↗s.v..
muktanaf, adj., surrounded, enclosed (bi‑ by): PP VIII.

For other items of this root, see ↗√KNF and especially ↗kunāfaẗ
kunāfaẗ كُنافة , pl. ‑āt 
ID 772 • Sw – • BP – • APD … • © SG | 15Feb2021
√KNF 
n.f. 
vermicelli baked in sugar, melted butter and honey – WehrCowan1979. 
Since it is problematic to relate the semantics of this word to other values of the root KNF, it is highly probable that it is a foreign word. Youssef2003 suggested to derive it, via Copt kenephiten, from Eg ḫnf.w(t) , a type of cake. Cf. however Huehnergard2011, who thinks it is akin to ‘to flank, surround, provide with an enclosure’ and, hence, ultimately based on ↗kanaf ‘wing, side’. 
Alf laylaẗ (Calc.) IV: 677,678 – Ullmann WKAS
▪ 16 hits in arabicorpus.com for the premodern period, all in 1001 Nights (06Jan2015). 
▪ Item not mentioned in DRS 9 (2010)#KNP at all. 
▪ The value is not mentioned in DRS 9 (2010)#KNP.
▪ Youssef2003: a kind of Egyptian sweet pastry, possibly from Eg ḫnf.w [also ḫnf.wt, a type of cake], Copt kenephiten [kind of loaf or cake]
▪ The fact that the first attestation we seem to have for this item is in Alf laylaẗ wa-laylaẗ supports the assumption that the word has made its way into fuṣḥā via a dialect, probably EgAr.
▪ Huehnergard2011 derives the word from Ar kanafa ‘to flank, surround, provide with an enclosure’, which is from ↗kanaf ‘wing, side’, from ComSem *kanap‑ ‘id.’ 
▪ Engl kanafeh, kenafeh, knafeh, kunafah, kunafeh, etc. are direct borrowings from Ar. 
kanafānī, n., maker, seller of kunāfaẗ : n.prof., denom., shortened from *kunā fānī
kanīf كَنِيف , pl. kunuf 
ID … • Sw – • BP – • APD … • © SG | 15Feb2021
√KNF 
n. 
water closet, toilet; public lavatory – WehrCowan1979. 
DRS lists the word as a value distinct from ‘wing; to shelter, protect’ and ‘to surround, encircle’. But why shouldn’t the ‘toilet’ just be the *‘fenced, protected place’? The quasi-PP form fits very well in such an etymology, and the original values are attested in ClassAr. 
▪ ‘toilet’ (KNF_3) is originally *‘the sheltered place’, a specialised meaning of a quasi-PP from vb. I. In ClassAr, the original meaning is still attested: Ullmann WKAS gives ‘surrounding, covering, protecting (of a shield)’ and ‘enclosure, pen, fold, paddock, barricade (of shrubbery)’, before he mentions ‘lavatory, closet, latrine, privy’.
▪ The value ‘graveyard’ that the f. kanīfaẗ takes in ChadAr is clearly a specialisation of *‘enclosure, fenced, protected place’. 
DRS 10 (2012)#KNP-3 mentions only a MġrAr form knīf ‘lieux d’aisance, latrines’ and, with an interrogation mark, ChadAr kanīfa ‘cimetière’.
▪ But kanīf is both ClassAr and MSA and belongs most probably to the complex treated under ↗kanaf ‘wing’. For related items see therefore there. 
▪ The MġrAr and ChadAr items listed in DRS as well as the MSA value can easily be derived from the value ‘to surround, fence, protect’ so that the item should rather be grouped with ↗kanaf ‘wing’ from which ‘to surround, fence, protect’ etc. are derived. 
– 
– 
Go to Wiki Documentation
Enhet: Det humanistiske fakultet   Utviklet av: IT-seksjonen ved HF
Login