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
LḤN لحن 
ID … • Sw – • BP – • APD … • © SG | 15Feb2021
√LḤN 
“root” 
▪ LḤN_1 ‘to speak ungrammatical Arabic (interspersed with barbarisms)’ ↗laḥana
▪ LḤN_2 ‘air, tune, melody’ ↗laḥn
▪ LḤN_3 ‘intelligent, understanding, sensible’ ↗laḥin

Other values, now obsolete, include:
  • LḤN_4 ‘to incline’ : laḥana a (laḥn) (ʔilà to)
  • LḤN_5 ‘to drop\give a veiled hint, speak in code, allude to, hint at’: laḥana a (laḥn) (li- to); cf. also lāḥana, vb. III, ‘to make insinuations’; ʔalḥana, vb. IV, ‘to intimate s.th. to s.o., to give s.o. to understand s.th.’

Semantic value spectrum in ClassAr (acc. to BAH2008): ‘1 dialect, language; 2 to err in speaking or reading, deviate; 3 to speak in code, allude to, hint at; 4 tune, to read melodically’ 
▪ Apart from an uncertain item in Ug, Ar √LḤN does not seem to have cognates in Sem, nor outside Sem.
▪ Fück1950 derives values [v1] to [v3] and [v5] from the now obsolete laḥana ‘to incline’ (LḤN_4), but this seems slightly doubtful. To the author of the present entry, what Fück thinks to be secondary, dependent on ‘to incline’, namely the idea of ‘deviation, modification, modulation’, seems more likely to be the “etymon proper”.
▪ LḤN_2: Günzburg1892 thought that laḥn in the sense of ‘air, tune, melody’ and Grk liχanós ‘tone’ probably go back to the same (Sem) source. Developing on this, LandbergZetterstéen1942 derives Ar laḥn from Grk liχanós ‘forefinger; (hence also:) the string struck with the forefinger, and its note’. Though semantically not without some plausibility, phonologically this etymology would be difficult to explain. 
▪ … 
▪ LḤN_1 : Zammit2002: Ar laḥn ‘a vicious pronunciation’ is without parallels in the langs the author has looked at (Akk, Ug, Hbr, Phoen, Aram, Syr, SAr, Gz).
▪ LḤN_3 : Tropper2008: Ug lḥn (meaning uncertain!) ‘to be understanding, intelligent’ or ‘to be closely related (to s.o.)’ (cf. Ar laḥḥ ‘close relationship’). 
▪ According to Fück1950: 128-33, all values of the Ar root go back to one basic meaning, namely 0 ‘to incline, lean towards’ [= LḤN_4], indicating any deviation from/modification of the normal (position, situation). Directly from here Fück derives 1 the adj. laḥin *‘flexible, mobile, agile’ = ‘clever, intelligent, perspicacious’ and the n. laḥan ‘cleverness, comprehension, perspicacity’ [= LḤN_3] and an extension into the field of speaking, with 2 *‘abnormal way of speaking’, forming a new extended base from which derive other values like 2a ‘eloquence’, or 2b ‘melody’ [= LḤN_2], or 2c ‘talking in riddles full of hidden meanings\veiled hints\allusions\insinuations’ [= LḤN_5], or 2d ‘delusive expression’, and, finally, 2e downright ‘grammatical mistake, blunder’ [= LḤN_1]. According to Ayoub, the positive connotations are earlier than the negative ones (art. “Laḥn” in EALL).
▪ Is Fück correct? WKAS does not have Fück’s ‘to incline, lean towards’ as a basic value. It seems that the latter rather is secondary, based on ‘deviation, modulation, modification’; it is right that laḥana can mean ‘to incline’, but only in the particular sense of ‘to incline to s.o., lean towards s.o., show affection to s.o. ’, i.e., to a person, cf. the lexicographers’ explanation of laḥana li- (which is similar to ʔilà) as ‘to talk to s.o. in a way that only he understands (it remains unintellegible to others)’ (laḥana la-hū ʔiḏā qāla la-hū qawlan yafhamu-hū ʕan-hu wa-yaḫfī ʕalà ġayri-hī) (≈ LḤN_5); so, the ‘inclination’ or ‘affection’ is a way of talking ‘abnormally’, or the result thereof.
▪ [LḤN_2] For the idea that laḥn ‘melody’ may be from Grk liχanós ‘forefinger (etc.)’, cf. ↗laḥn
– 
– 
laḥan‑ لَحَنَ , a (laḥn , luḥūn , laḥānaẗ
ID … • Sw – • BP … • APD … • © SG | 15Feb2021
√LḤN 
vb., I 
to speak ungrammatical Arabic (interspersed with barbarisms) – WehrCowan1979. 
▪ √LḤN seems to be an exclusively Ar root, not attested elsewhere in Sem nor outside of it.
▪ The basic meaning of Ar √LḤN is probably *‘to deviate (from the normal), modulate, modify’. While an interpretation of this ‘deviation’ in a positive sense seems to be quite old (↗laḥn ‘melody’), the negative sense is believed to have become prevalent after the early Arab conquests only, when the language came to be normed and standardized by the grammarians (*‘deviation from the normal > abnormal way of speaking, modulation in language > to make grammatical mistakes, blunders’).
▪ In the sense of ‘bad, incorrect Arabic, gibberish; grammatical mistake, blunder’ (WKAS), the vn. laḥn became one of the antonyms of ↗ʔiʕrāb and ↗faṣāḥaẗ.
▪ For laḥn as one of the many so-called ʔaḍdād (words that can take contradictory meanings) cf. individual entry on ↗laḥn
▪ eC7 laḥn (deviation, crookedness, twisting) Q 47:30 wa-la-taʕrifanna-hum fī laḥni ’l-qawli ‘but you will know them by [the] twisting of [their] speech’
▪ For ClassAr laḥana, WKAS gives: ‘to speak bad, incorrect Arabic, to talk gibberish, to make (a) grammatical error(s); †to drop a hint (li- to), give (li¬- s.o.) a veiled hint’.
▪ Fück1950 finds the earliest attestation for the meaning ‘to speak ungrammatical Arabic’ in a verse by an unknown poet from c. 630 CE.1  
– 
▪ In ClassAr, laḥn is sometimes identified with ↗luġaẗ. According to Ayoub, this comes »from an archaic meaning of laḥn prior to the setting up of a linguistic norm. […] With the implementation of the norm, laḥn, which in its pre-classical acceptation meant a detour of speech in a positive sense [my emphasis—S.G.], came to express a negative ‘deviation’, a speech error.« Thus, in classical usage luġaẗ »represents legitimate linguistic variation, prior to the ‘corruption of the language’ that according to the sources appeared in the 1st century A.H.«, while laḥn came to mean »illegitimate linguistic change, “the diverging [in speech] from the correct form” (Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān 4013), as a result of ‘corruption of the language’.« This shift of meaning from a positive to a negative sense was accompanied by a transfer of the field of reference from the spoken to the written. Originally, in the pre-classical use of the term, »laḥn seems to have denoted the wrong use of language in speaking, since it is linked to voice and sound.« Later, however, it came to refer to mistakes in the written language, demonstrating the status acquired over nearly a century by the ʕarabiyya as a literary language, essentially linked to writing.«1
▪ Ayoub’s description matches that of Fück1950 who also believed that the preponderance of the value ‘grammatical mistake’ which in ClassAr overgrew most of the others (except ‘melody’), can be explained as a phenomenon of the period of futūḥ, when the Arabs conquered the territories of non-Arabic-speaking peoples and the knowledge of Arabic became a precondition of being accepted into the elites of the new ‘Islamicate’ society; in this period, Fück says, Arabs were confronted, for the first time on a larger scale, with groups of people trying to speak and write Arabic but still making a number of mistakes.
▪ Some lexicographers counted laḥn with its values a. al-ḫaṭaʔ, b. al-tawriyaẗ, and c. al-fiṭnaẗ among the words that can take contradictory meanings (ʔaḍdād).2  
– 
ʔalḥana, vb. IV, 1 = laḥana; 2 to mispronounce, esp. while reading the Koran aloud: Š-stem, caus. (of the original *‘to deviate’, i.e., lit. *‘to make deviate, sc. from correct pronunciation’), or denom. from laḥn.
BP#3656laḥn, pl. ʔalḥān, luḥūn, n., 1laḥn; 2 grammatical mistake, solecism, barbarism: vn. I.
malḥūn, adj., 1 incorrect, ungrammatical (language); 2 (maġr.) poetry in colloquial language: PP I. – Cf. also an earlier value, as given by Kazimirski: ‘agréable à l’oreille, mélodieux’, from ↗laḥn in the sense of pleasant modulation, melody, tune’.

For other values attached to the same root, cf. ↗laḥn, ↗laḥin, and, for the whole picture, ↗LḤN. 
laḥn لَحْن , pl. ʔalḥān , luḥūn 
ID … • Sw – • BP 3656 • APD … • © SG | 15Feb2021
√LḤN 
n. 
1 air, tune, melody; 2laḥana – WehrCowan1979. 
▪ For Fück1950: 128-33, the value ‘melody’ is based on the original idea of a *‘deviation from the normal’, extended into the field of language and speaking; ‘melody’ would thus properly be an *‘abnormal way of speaking’. The positive connotation (pleasant deviation) seems to be earlier than the negative ones than laḥn took in Isl times (for these, cf. ↗laḥana ‘to make grammatical mistakes’, etc.).
▪ LandbergZetterstéen1942, misreading Günzburg1892, would derive laḥn ‘melody’ from Grk liχanós (see detail below, section DISC), but this seems unlikely for pholonogical reasons.
▪ For [v2] ‘incorrect Arabic, grammatical mistake’, etc., cf. ↗laḥana.
 
▪ … 
– 
▪ According to Fück1950, the value ‘melody’ is derived from the basic idea of a *‘deviation from the normal’ in language and speaking, whence also the other values of laḥn in ClassAr, like ‘manner of speaking, intonation, speech, dialect’, ‘bad, incorrect Arabic, gibberish; grammatical mistake, blunder’, and ‘allusion, hint, insinuation’ (WKAS) (for these, cf. ↗laḥana).
▪ While [v1] ‘melody’ is attested already for pre-Isl times, Fück believed that the preponderance of [v2] ‘grammatical mistake’ which somehow overgrew most of the others (with the exception of ‘melody’), can be explained as a phenomenon of the period of futūḥ (see ↗laḥana). Ayoub, too, thinks that the value ‘positive/pleasant deviation’ is prior to the negative connotations, which came with linguistic normativity in the early Islamicate period.
▪ In contrast to the established view which sees the LḤN as one etymological unit, Günzburg1892 thought that »some musical terms, like laḥn ([Grk] liχanós) and ↗naġam ([Grk] neûma), were probably borrowed by […] Greeks and Arabs […] from a third people, without doubt of Sem descent.«3
▪ Misreading Günzburg’s theory (but finding this reading more convincing), LandbergZetterstéen1942 derives laḥn in the sense of ‘melody’ directly from Grk liχanós ‘index, forefinger; hence also: the string struck with the forefinger, and its note’.4 »J’ai toujours pensé que laḥn ‘mélodie’ et laḥn ‘faute de grammaire’ sont deux mots de provenance différente. […]. Cette polysémie me paraît indiquer que tout ce thème LḤN peut pas provenir d’une source commune arabe. Mais déjà de bonne heure et avant l’Islam, laḥana a pris le sens de ‘chanter’.« LandbergZetterstéen finds this etymology »assez probable« because it also shows »en même temps l’origine de la musique arabe moderne«.5 – From the point of semantics, this theory is certainly not without some plausibility. Phonologically, however, it seems difficult to explain how liχanós should have become laḥn.
▪ On account of the many and partly contradictory values that laḥn could take in ClassAr, some lexicographers counted the word among the ʔaḍdād (for more details, cf. section DISC in entry ↗laḥana). 
▪ The Ar word has been borrowed into nHbr as laḥan ‘tune, melody’ (cf. also the denom. lāḥan ‘to sing, chant, psalmodize’ and the Š-stem hi-lḥîn ‘to set to music, compose; to sing, chant, psalmodize’ – Klein1987) and Malt lehen ‘voice’ (Rajki2005). 
laḥḥana, vb. II, 1 to chant, psalmodize; 2 to intone, strike up a melody; 3 to set to music, compose: D-stem, denom., caus.
talḥīn, pl. talāḥīnᵘ, n., musical composition, musical arrangement: vn. II.
talḥīnī, adj., singable: nsb-formation from vn. II.
mulaḥḥin, pl. -ūn, n., composer (mus.): PA II.

For other values attached to the same root, cf. ↗laḥana, ↗laḥin, and, for the whole picture, ↗LḤN. 
laḥin لَحِن 
ID … • Sw – • BP … • APD … • © SG | 15Feb2021
√LḤN 
adj. 
intelligent, understanding, sensible – WehrCowan1979. 
▪ √LḤN seems to be an exclusively Ar root, not attested elsewhere in Sem nor outside of it.
▪ The basic meaning of Ar √LḤN is probably *‘to deviate (from the normal), modulate, modify’ (for Fück1950 this is secondary from a primary value ‘to incline, lean towards’). From ‘deviation’, Fück derives the adj. laḥin in the sense of *‘flexible, mobile, agile’, hence ‘clever, intelligent, perspicacious’ and the n. laḥan ‘cleverness, comprehension, perspicacity’.
▪ Is Fück right? In my [SG] view, the semantic shift he assumes—from ‘deviation’ to *‘flexibility, mobility’—is not very convincing. But unless we assign the current value to another, homonymous root there are by now no better suggestions. 
WKAS has laḥina a (laḥan) ‘to be clever, intelligent, perspicacious; †to learn, grasp, understand (s.th., ʕan from s.o.); lāḥana, vb. III, ‘to outdo, excel in cleverness, astuteness’; †laḥan, n., ‘cleverness, comprehension, perspicacity’, laḥin and lāḥin, adj., ‘clever, intelligent, perspicacious’ 
▪ Probably without cognates. According to Tropper2008, the meaning of Ug lḥn is uncertain (either ‘to be understanding, intelligent’ or ‘to be closely related to s.o.’, cf. Ar laḥḥ ‘close relationship’). 
▪ See above, section CONC. 
– 
laḥina, a (laḥan), to be intelligent: denom.?

For other values attached to the same root, cf. ↗laḥana, ↗laḥn, and, for the whole picture, ↗LḤN. 
Go to Wiki Documentation
Enhet: Det humanistiske fakultet   Utviklet av: IT-seksjonen ved HF
Login