disc▪ On account of the Sem evidence Orel/Stolbova 1994 #1642 reconstruct Sem *laḥm- ‘bread, food; meat’. Taken together with the WCh evidence, for which the authors reconstruct WCh *laHam- ‘meat’, they postulate a common origin in AfrAs *laḥam- ‘meat, food’.
▪ Huehnergard 2011 assumes Sem √LḤM ‘to eat’.
▪ For a discussion of the relation between ‘meat’, ‘bread’ and the more general ‘food’, cf. Guidi 1879, Fraenkel 1889, Krotkoff 1969.
▪ For an attempt to make Sem *laḥm‑ ‘(solid) food’ dependent on *LḤM ‘to be/get in close contact, be glued together, be compact, solid’ (LḤM_2), see Krotkoff 1969. If there is such dependence, then Ar laḥm ‘meat’ is akin to other items of the root, such as ↗laḥama ‘to mend, patch, weld, solder (up)’, II laḥḥama ‘to solder’, VIII ĭltaḥama ‘to adhere, stick to, cling to, fit closely, be interjoined, closely united; to scar over, cicatrize (wound)’, laḥmaẗ, luḥmaẗ ‘woof, weft (of a fabric), luḥmaẗ ‘relationship, kinship’, as well as to the complex of ‘battle, fighting, etc.’ (LḤM_3), cf. ↗malḥamaẗ.
▪ »Laḥm was used in Classical Arabic to designate any type of meat, including flesh (edible or not), and even the core of fruit. In present-day Arabic, the same word, while still used to designate flesh and still within the domain of edible meats, conveys (red) meats almost exclusively, while other types of meats are referenced often by the name of their animal source (e.g. dajāj ‘chicken’)« – Esseesy 2009.