Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ NǦL_1 ‘to beget’ ↗naǧala
▪ NǦL_2 ‘large-eyed, wide (eye), gaping (wound)’ ↗ʔanǧalᵘ
▪ NǦL_3 ‘couch grass, orchard grass (Dactylis; bot.); quitch (bot.)’ ↗naǧīl
▪ NǦL_4 ‘scythe, sickle’ ↗minǧal
▪ NǦL_5 ‘bench vice’ ↗manǧalaẗ
▪ NǦL_6 (ʔNGL) ‘anglification’ ↗ʔangalaẗ
▪ NǦL_7 (ʔNǦīL) ‘gospel’ ↗ʔinǧīl
▪ NǦL_8 (ʔNGūLā) ‘Angola’ ↗ʔanġōlā

Other meanings, now obsolete (as given by Steingass1884 and Hava1899, corroborated by Wahrmund1877; unless stated otherwise, meanings given in French are from Kazimirski1860):

▪ ^†NǦL_9 ‘to rip up, skin (a slaughtered animal) from the hocks’: ^†naǧala, u (naǧl)
▪ ^†NǦL_10 ‘to blot out, erase (a writing), wipe the writing-tablet’: ^†naǧala, i or u (naǧl); ? VIII ^†ĭntaǧala ‘to remove water from the foot of a wall’
▪ ^†NǦL_11 ‘to throw away, fling, strike off (with a foot or leg, e.g., pebbles)’: ^†naǧala, i (naǧl); ? VIII ^†ĭntaǧala ‘to remove water from the foot of a wall’
▪ ^†NǦL_12 ‘to ill-treat s.o.’: ^†naǧala, i (naǧl)
▪ ^†NǦL_13 ‘marcher d’un pas vigoureux’: ^†naǧala, i (naǧl)
▪ ^†NǦL_14 ‘to strike, beat, push, drive’: ^†naǧala, u (naǧl)
▪ ^†NǦL_15 ‘to split, pierce (s.th., bi‑ with a spear); to make and opening in the earth to till (the ground)’: ^†naǧala, i or u (naǧl); ^†naǧl ‘opening made in the earth to plant s.th.’
▪ ^†NǦL_16 ‘outflowing water, spring / eau qui sort du sol’ (LandbergZetterstéen1942)’: ^†naǧl, pl. ʔanǧāl; cf. also ^†naǧala, u (naǧl) and X ^†ĭstanǧala ‘1 to abound with springs of water; 2 to become swampy (ground) / se couvrir d’eau à la surface (se dit du sol marécageux)’, DaṯAr naǧīlaẗ ‘spring, well’ (LandbergZetterstéen1942)
▪ ^†NǦL_17 ‘to combat, fight / combattre, en venir aux mains les uns avec les autres’: VI ^†tanāǧala
▪ ^†NǦL_18 ‘hervorbringen, ans Licht ziehen, bekannt machen | tirer, extraire ou emmener | to disclose; to manifest s.th.’ : ^†naǧala, u (naǧl); cf. also VIII ^†ĭntaǧala ‘to show o.s., appear (and disappear) / apparaître et disparaître aussitôt’; cf. also X ^†ĭstanǧala ‘pousser de dessous terre, paraître à la surface du sol’
▪ ^†NǦL_19 ‘breiter Weg’: ^†naǧl, pl. ʔanǧāl

General remarks
While items NǦL_5–8 obviously are of foreign provenience, relations among the remaining values of the root are as unclear as the etymology of the corresponding items, due to the relative scarcity of Sem or other cognates. It is also not clear whether all can/should be traced back to one single value or etymon, or whether we are dealing with two or more homonymous roots. Opinion differs considerably, even in the case of minǧal ‘scythe, sickle’ (NǦL_4), which some believe to be of ultimately Sum origin while others derive it from Copt, or Eg, or Grk, and again others postulate a Sem *NGL ‘to mow, reap’ and/or put it together with the vb. Ar naǧala, giving the latter’s basic value either as ‘to remove the skin from a slaughtered animal’ (^†NǦL_9) or ‘to blot out, erase (a writing), wipe the writing-tablet’ (^†NǦL_10) or ‘to split, pierce’ (^†NǦL_15). – Leslau, Ehret and Orel&Stolbova seem to identify at least two roots: Ehret1989 gives pre-protSem *NG ‘to strip’ as the origin of Ar naǧala in the sense of ‘to blot out, erase, wipe the writing tablet’ (^†NǦL_10), while Ehret1995 reconstructs pre-protSem *ng ‘to seep, ooze’ as the basis of Ar naǧl ‘outflowing water, spring’ and a denom. vb. naǧala ‘to abound with springs of water’ (^†NǦL_16); Orel&Stolbova1994 list a Sem *n˅gil‑ ‘to mow, reap’ (> Ar NǦL_4 minǧal ‘sickle’) alongside with Sem *n˅gil‑ ‘to throw’ (> Ar ^†NǦL_11 naǧala ‘to throw away, fling’), both of which with assumed AfrAs predecessors; Leslau1987 associates one Gz ngl (‘to uproot’) with Ar nǧl ‘to remove the skin from a slaughtered animal’ (^†NǦL_9) while he does not give an Ar cognate of another, homonymous Gz ngl (‘to become visible’) although its meaning comes close to Ar ^†NǦL_18. The latter’s semantics may also suggest contamination with an N-stem of ↗ǦLW/Y ‘to make clear, plain, clarify’, cf. Ar ĭnǧalà, vb. VII, ‘to become clear, manifest itself’.

NǦL_5–8
▪ NǦL_5: prob. from modGrk μέγγενη ~ μέγκενη /méŋgeni/ ‘bench vice’; perh. a wanderwort.
▪ NǦL_6: created from an assumed 4-rad. root *√ʔNGL along the faʕlalaẗ pattern for vn.s of 4-rad. verbs, cf. TaRǦaMaẗ ‘translation’, from TaRǦaMa, vb. I, ‘to translate, interpret’, from √TRǦM, or TaLFaNa ‘to phone’, from TiLīFūN ‘telephone’, hypothetical root *√TLFN.
▪ NǦL_7: lw., prob. via Gz wangēl, from Grk εὐαγγέλιον euangélion ‘god tidings, gospel’
▪ NǦL_8: Eg spelling of ʔanġōlā ‘Angola’

NǦL_1–4 and ^†NǦL_9–19
▪ One basic thematic idea that possibly is common to several of the non-foreign values seems to be the one given by Ǧabal2012 for the root nucleus *NǦ‑ in general, namely ‘breaking through [and welling/pouring out, i.e., eruption] of s.th. thick, but not solid, from within s.th. (nafāḏ kaṯīf ġayr ṣalib min bāṭin šayʔ)’, which corresponds, roughly, to Ehret’s (1995) assumption of a pre-protSem *√NG ‘to seep, ooze ’ (↗NǦ‑_2). The values that come closest to this idea would be ^†‘to split, pierce (and thereby cause an opening); (to make an opening in the earth) to till (the ground)’ (^†NǦL_15), ^†‘to show o.s., appear, break through (from down in the soil); to disclose, manifest’ (^†NǦL_18), and ^†‘outflowing water, spring’, hence also ‘to abound with springs of water; to become swampy (ground)’ (^†NǦL_16), perhaps even ‘large-eyed, wide (eye), gaping (wound)’ (NǦL_2, if the eye or wound is seen as *‘opening ’ caused by the *‘penetration, piercing’ of ^†NǦL_15). ^†‘Outflowing water, spring’ could in turn be the source of ‘to beget; offspring’ (NǦL_1, if thought as *‘eruption of sperms, ejaculation’) as well as of ^†‘to combat, fight’ (^†NǦL_17, enemies *‘spurting out, erupting’ into each other). Perhaps also the naǧīl type of grass (NǦL_3) is originally the *‘pullulating (i.e., erupting, and quickly spreading)’ plant. Also the ‘broad path’ (^†NǦL_19) may be a metaphorical or extended use of what originally was a *‘wide opening’ (NǦL_2). – If the *‘breaking through/eruption’ is thought of as accompanied by some vehemence/violence, then also some other items may be connected. But this would be even more speculative – and probably also less convincing than their derivation from…
▪ Orel&Stolbova’s (1994) Sem *n˅gil‑ ‘to throw ’ or Ehret’s (1989) pre-protSem *NG ‘to strip ’ (↗NǦ‑_1). The item that Ehret regards as the direct result of the extension of this nucleus by finitive *‑l is ^†‘to blot out, erase, wipe the writing tablet’ (^†NǦL_10). But why not also ^†‘to remove the skin from a slaughtered animal’ (^†NǦL_9)? The latter is the value Leslau1987 assumes to be akin to Gz nagala ‘to be uprooted’, Soq ngl ‘to make go out’ and Syr naggel ‘to remove’, and hence also to Ar minǧal ‘scythe, sickle’ (NǦL_4) which he thinks is the *‘instrument that removes, uproots’. Given that the movement carried out in ‘blotting out, erasing, wiping the writing tablet’ can be imagined to be a vehement, swift movement away from the speaker, one may also connect ^†‘to throw away, fling, strike off (with a foot or leg, e.g., pebbles); to remove water from the foot of a wall’ (^†NǦL_11), which later may have been generalized into ^†‘to strike, beat, push, drive’ (^†NǦL_14) and hence also ^†‘to ill-treat’ (^†NǦL_12) and ^†‘marcher d’un pas vigoureux’ (^†NǦL_13). – But, again: all this is highly speculative, uncorroborated by sufficient evidence, and all assumptions are at best preliminary.
▪ EtymArab’s hypothesis is that (a) the evidence outside Ar is broad enough to assume a wider Sem and AfrAs dimension and therefore exclude dependence of the root, as a whole, on Sum, Eg, Copt, or Grk, and (b) that, within Sem, the primary value is ^†[v11] ‘to throw away (stones, pebbles, a lance etc.), fling, strike off’ (= Orel&Stolbova1994: Sem *n˅gil‑ ‘to throw’, from AfrAs *n˅gol‑ ‘id.’). This ‘throwing away’ is accompanied by, or carried out with, some violence (hence ^†[v13] ‘marcher d’un pas vigoureux’), typically directed at an animal to chase it (> ^†[v14] ‘to strike, beat, push, drive away’) or a human being (> ^†[v12] ‘to ill-treat’). The chasing may also be carried out with a lance or a spear, and when this is directed against another person, esp. an enemy, we get ^†[v17] ‘to combat, fight’. The attack may result in some ‘splitting, piercing’ (^†[v15]), caused by the weapon. In a next step, ‘splitting, piercing’ gives rise to a number of derived values. On the one hand, there is, once an animal is killed, the splitting of its skin at a certain point of the leg, as an initial opening with the aim of ‘ripping up, skinning (a slaughtered animal) from the hocks’ (^†[v9]) (cf. Ehret1989’s pre-protSem *NG ‘to strip’), a notion that can easily be transferred to the ‘blotting out, erasing (of a writing), or wiping (of the writing-tablet)’ (^†[v10]), which is similar to the removal of the skin in that it is a scraping movement away from the agent. From ‘splitting, piercing’ may also derive the ‘cutting’ carried out by [v4] the ‘sickle’ (cf. Orel&Stolbova1994: Sem *n˅gil‑ ‘to mow, reap’, from AfrAs *n˅gil‑ ‘to cut’), perh. crossing the semantics of a loanword (Sum > Akk > WSem) here. On the other hand, the splitting may also cause a wide opening, which is the basic idea of the ‘gaping wound’ and the ‘wide, open eye’ ([v2]) as well as openings in the earth caused by digging, to cultivate crops, or openings happening naturally and spontaneously in the ground or a swamp, causing water to ‘flow out, spring’, hence the values ‘to abound with springs of water’ and ‘to become swampy (ground)’ ^†[v16] (cf. Ǧabal2012’s Ar *NǦ‑ ‘breaking through, eruption’ and Ehret1995’s pre-protSem *NG ‘to seep, ooze’). ‘Erupting’ like water from the ground may also be the copious growth of the [v3] ‘couch grass, orchard grass’, or male sperma when ejaculated from the penis (hence [v1] ‘to beget’), or the sudden ‘appearance (and disappearance)’ of s.th. (^†[v18]). Last but not least, also ^†[v19] ‘broad path’ may originally be simply a ‘wide opening’.

NB: First attestations given only for the values that have become obsolete in MSA. For the others, cf. entries ↗naǧala, ↗ʔanǧalᵘ, ↗naǧīl, and ↗minǧal.

▪ ^†NǦL_9 ‘to remove the skin from a slaughtered animal’: first attested in this sense in 723 CE in a verse by ʕUmar b. Laǧaʔ al-Taymī – HDAL (1Jun2020).
▪ ^†NǦL_11 ‘to throw away, fling, strike off (with a foot or leg, e.g., pebbles)’ and ^†NǦL_14 ‘to strike, beat, push, drive’: ^†naǧala ‘to drive (a camel) forward by throwing pebbles on it’, first attested 544 CE in a verse by ʔImruʔ al-Qays b. Ḥuǧr al-Kindī (vn. naǧl 693 CE, al-Zafayān al-Saʕdī) – HDAL (1Jun2020).
▪ ^†NǦL_15 ‘to split, pierce (s.th., bi‑ with a spear); to till (the ground)’: naǧl (spears etc.: causing widely gaping wounds) first attested 545 CE in a verse by Ṭarīfaẗ/Ẓarīfaẗ al-Ḥimyariyyaẗ; corresponding vb. naǧala ‘to hit s.o. with a spear, thereby causing a gaping wound’ 670 CE in a verse by Mulayḥ b. al-Ḥakam al-Huḏalī – HDAL (1Jun2020). – Derived value ‘to dig up the earth to prepare it for agriculture’: first attested 657 CE in a verse by Ibn Muqbil al-ʕAġlānī al-Tamīmī – HDAL (1Jun2020).
▪ ^†NǦL_16 ‘(n.) outflowing water, spring; (vb.) 1 to abound with springs of water; 2 to become swampy (ground)’: ^†naǧl ‘water pouring out from a swamp’, first attested 581 CE in a verse by ʕAmr Ḏū ’l-Kalb b. al-ʕAǧlān al-Huḏalī – HDAL (1Jun2020).

▪ NǦL_1 naǧala ‘to beget’: (?) Gz nagad ‘tribe, clan, kin, stock, kindred, progeny, lineage, family’ (connection suggested by Dillmann 695 and Barth 1893: 33, but considered “doubtful” by Leslau1987: 391). Equally or even more unlikely, according to Leslau1987: 137, is the derivation (suggested by Praetorius1879: 77) of Gz dəngəl ‘chaste (young man), celibate (monk), virgin’ from Ar naǧala ‘to beget’. – Value dependent on ^†NǦL_15 ‘to pierce’ and/or ^†NǦL_16 ‘outflowing water, spring’?
▪ NǦL_2 ʔanǧalᵘ ‘large-eyed, wide (eye), gaping (wound)’: no cognates in Sem or outside Sem. – Akin to ^†NǦL_15 ‘to pierce’ and/or ^†NǦL_16 ‘outflowing water, spring’?
▪ NǦL_3 naǧīl ‘couch grass, orchard grass; quitch’: EgAr naggil, vb. II, ‘1 to free of nigīl; 2 to grass, produce grass, become grassy’. – No obvious cognates outside Ar. – Akin to ^†NǦL_15 ‘to pierce’ and/or ^†NǦL_16 ‘outflowing water, spring’.
▪ NǦL_4 minǧal ‘sickle’: (? Akk niggallu, ningallu,) Hbr maggāl, JudAram maggǝlā, Syr maggəlā, maggaltā ‘sickle’, Mand manglia ‘scythes’, Ar naǧala ‘faucher (les céréales), labourer (la terre)’. – Leslau1987: 392 thinks Ar minǧal is cognate to Ar naǧala ‘to remove the skin from a slaughtered animal’ (^†NǦL_9), to which he also puts Soq ngl ‘to make go out’, Syr naggel ‘to remove’, Gz nagala ‘to be uprooted, roll, roll up, make into a ball’ (‘scythe, sickle’ < *‘instrument that removes, uproots’); but he also thinks that it is possible that Gz nagala ‘to roll up’ is to be separated from Gz nagala ‘to be uprooted’. – Fraenkel1886 derives minǧal from naǧala ‘to pierce’ (^†NǦL_15). – Rolland2014: from Copt mančale ‘pickaxe, hoe’, from Grk makélē ~ mákella ‘dto.’, but probably (= Rolland’s »hypothèse personnelle«) also akin to Akk ikkaru ‘plowman, farm laboror; farmer’ (> Ar ↗ʔakkār ‘plowman’), from Sum engar ‘irrigator, farmer’ (< en ‘lord’ + agar ‘field’ – Halloran3.0). – Corriente2008: EgAr mangal, Ar minǧal »do not appear to derive from a rather uncommon verb *naǧala«, so a Copt origin should not be excluded; but more likely from Eg. In contrast, Westendorf2008 thinks Copt mankʸale ~ mančale ‘Hacke, Schaufel’ is from Ar minǧal… – Orel&Stolbova1994 and Militarev&Stolbova2007 see cognates also outside Sem, in some Chad languages: (WCh) Warji ngǝlatǝ-na, Kariya ngalǝta, Miya ngǝlatǝ ‘sickle’; (CCh) Gude ŋgíla ‘knife’, Nzangi ngîla ‘knife, sword’; (ECh) Migama ʔângùl ‘sickle’.
▪ NǦL_5 manǧalaẗ ‘bench vice’: no cognates (loanword).
▪ NǦL_6 ʔangalaẗ ‘anglification’: no cognates (loanword).
▪ NǦL_7 ʔinǧīl ‘gospel’: no cognates (loanword).
▪ NǦL_8 ʔanġōlā ‘Angola’: no cognates (n.topogr.).
▪ ^†NǦL_9 naǧala ‘to remove the skin from a slaughtered animal’: Leslau1987: 392 sees Gz nagala ‘to be uprooted; to roll, roll up, make into a ball’ as akin to Ar ^†NǦL_9 as well as Soq ngl ‘to make go out’, Syr naggel ‘to remove’; he also thinks that Ar minǧal ‘scythe, sickle’ (NǦL_4, see above) has to be put here, as *‘instrument that removes, uproots’.
▪ ^†NǦL_10 naǧala ‘to blot out, erase (a writing), wipe the writing-tablet’: no obvious cognates, but perh. to be grouped together with ‘to remove water from the foot of a wall’; perh. akin to ^†NǦL_9 naǧala (see preceding item) and with this also to NǦL_4.
▪ ^†NǦL_11 naǧala ‘to throw away, fling, strike off (with a foot or leg, e.g., pebbles)’: cf. perh. also Ar ^†ĭntaǧala, vb. VIII, ‘to remove water from the foot of a wall’. – No obvious cognates, but perh. to be seen together with ^†NǦL_9, 10 and the following ^†NǦL_12-14, all of which denote a movement carried out with some vigour and intensity, often in a direction away from the speaker. – ? Outside Sem: (WCh) Tangale kwal, Gera ŋwal, Galambu ŋgwál‑, Kulere gyol ‘to throw’ – Militarev&Stolbova2007 (and Orel&Stolbova1994 #1897).
▪ ^†NǦL_12 naǧala ‘to ill-treat, mistreat’: see preceding.
▪ ^†NǦL_13 naǧala ‘marcher d’un pas vigoureux’: see NǦL_10-12.
▪ ^†NǦL_14 naǧala ‘to strike, beat, push, drive’: cf.^†NǦL_10-13.
▪ ^†NǦL_15 naǧala ‘to split, pierce; (to make an opening in the earth) to till (the ground)’: For Fraenkel1886, this is the basic value of naǧala from which, for him, also NǦL_4 minǧal ‘sickle’ derives. – Akin to NǦL_1 ‘to beget’ (< *‘to break through, erupt’) or ^†NǦL_16 ‘outflowing water, spring’ (< *‘water that comes out after having split/pierced/dug up the soil’)?
▪ ^†NǦL_16 naǧl ‘outflowing water, spring / eau qui sort du sol’, and (prob. denom.) naǧala, vb. I, and ĭstanǧala, vb. X, ‘1 to abound with springs of water; 2 to become swampy (ground) / se couvrir d’eau à la surface (se dit du sol marécageux)’, DaṯAr naǧīlaẗ ‘spring, well’: akin to NǦL_1 ‘to beget’ and/or NǦL_15 ‘to split, pierce; to till (the ground)’ (see preceding item)?
▪ ^†NǦL_17 tanāǧala, vb. VI, ‘to combat, fight / combattre, en venir aux mains les uns avec les autres’: metaphorical use of ^†NǦL_16 ‘outflowing water, spring’ (troops etc. seen as *‘spurting out, erupting’ into each other)? If so, the item may also be related to NǦL_2 ‘large-eyed, wide (eye), gaping (wound)’ and ^†NǦL_15 ‘to pierce’ (see above). – See also Ambivalent cases in section DISC below.
▪ ^†NǦL_18 naǧala ‘hervorbringen, ans Licht ziehen, bekannt machen / tirer, extraire ou emmener’: cf. also ^†ĭntaǧala, vb. VIII, ‘to show o.s., appear (and disappear) / apparaître et disparaître aussitôt’, and ^†ĭstanǧala, vb. X, ‘pousser de dessous terre, paraître à la surface du sol’: (?) Gz nagala ‘to be visible, be adorned’, mangal, mangəl ‘that which is visible, adornment’ – not considered as possible cognate of the Ar vb.s by Leslau1987 (s.v. nagala II). – Any relation to the N-stem of ǦLY (ĭnǧalà)? (See also Ambivalent cases, below.) – Or to ^†NǦL_15 ‘to pierce’ and/or ^†NǦL_16 ‘outflowing water, spring’ (in which it might also be akin to NǦL_1 ‘to beget’, NǦL_2 ‘large-eyed’, NǦL_3 naǧīl ‘couch grass’, etc.).
▪ ^†NǦL_19 naǧl ‘broad path’: probably akin to, or an extended use of, ‘opening’ (^†NǦL_2) caused by ‘splitting, piercing’ (^†NǦL_15).

Ambivalent evidence
▪ Syr ngal and naggel ‘to flee, take to flight’ (PayneSmith1903; Brockelmann1895 gives ‘1 devastatus est; 2 emigravit’) do not seem to be akin to any of the Ar values. Cf., however (sub ^†NǦL_9, above) Leslau’s rendering of Syr naggel as ‘to remove’, hence his association of the vb. with Ar naǧala ‘to remove the skin from a slaughtered animal’ as well as with minǧal ‘scythe, sickle’ (NǦL_4), as *‘instrument that removes, uproots’.
▪ Most of the DaṯAr items listed by LandbergZetterstéen1942 s.r. √NǦL are certainly not to be considered here, since they are dialectal variations of items from the standard Ar root √NQL, due to realisation of /q/ as [g] (e.g., DaṯAr nagal ‘transporter, décharger’, or tanaggal ‘transporter à plusieurs reprises’). – There are, however, also ʿOmAr negel and DaṯAr ntegel, both ‘to throw/cast o.s. into s.th.’, a value that may come close to Ar tanāǧala (^†NǦL_17) ‘to throw o.s. into combat’ and naǧala ‘to throw away, fling, strike off’ (^†NǦL_11).

▪ For an own attempt at a synthesis, integrating all Ar non-borrowed values, see above, end of section CONC.
▪ For possible deeper (Sem, pre-protSem, AfrAs) dimensions and the evidence put forward by the authors of corresponding theories, see ↗*NǦ‑, ↗*NǦ‑_1 and ↗*NǦ‑_2 (for Ehret); ↗*NǦ‑ and ^†NǦL_16 below (for Ǧabal); ^†NǦL_11 (for Orel&Stolbova’s *‘to throw’) and ^†NǦL_4 (for Orel&Stolbova’s *‘sickle; to reap, cut’).
▪ Like Orel&Stolbova, Dolgopolsky2012 #1582 distinguishes two main Sem values (based on the Ar evidence): a first one corresponding to Ar naǧala, u, ‘to rip up, skin (a beast) from the hocks ^†[v9]; till (the ground) ^†[v15]’, and a second one corresponding to Ar naǧala, i, ‘to erase (a writing)’ ^†[v10], ‘to strike off pebbles’ (camel) ^†[v11], ‘to pierce (with a spear)’ ^†[v15]. – He sees cognates in Chad (MfG ́‑ngɜl‑ ‘cueillir, arracher’, Mf ń̥gʷalala ‘fête de récolte’, ngɜl‑ ‘to cut’) and perh. Eg (Pyr) ngȝ ‘to kill, slaughter’,¹ (GrkRom) ngȝ ‘die Glieder zerfleischen, den Augapfel ausreißen’, and reconstructs Sem *√NGL < AfrAs *√NGL < Nostr *ńogü˹lͅ|ĺ˺˅ ‘to tear out\asunder, pinch, flay’ (reconstructed on account of assumed parallels in other macrofamilies).

▪ NǦL_1 naǧala ‘to beget’, naǧl ‘offspring’: no obvious cognates. – Dillmann and Barth (quoted in Leslau1987: 391) suggested to connect Ar naǧl with Gz nagad ‘tribe, clan, kin, stock, kindred, progeny, lineage, family’; Leslau himself, however, thinks this is »doubtful«. Equally or even more unlikely, according to Leslau1987: 137, is the derivation (suggested by Praetorius1879: 77) of Gz dəngəl ‘chaste (young man), celibate (monk), virgin’ from Ar naǧala ‘to beget’. – Etymology suggested by EtymArab: *^†[v11] ‘to throw away, fling, strike off (a spear, etc.)’ > thereby ^†[v15] ‘split, pierce (s.th.)’ and cause a [v2] ‘wide opening’ > ^†[v16] ‘opening through which water flows out, spring’ > [v1] ‘to beget’ (< *ejaculation of sperma). – There may have happened some contamination with ↗NSL (nasala ‘to beget, procreate, father’, nasl ‘progeny, offspring, descendants’).
▪ NǦL_2 ʔanǧalᵘ ‘large-eyed, wide (eye), gaping (wound)’: no immediately obvious cognates in Sem or outside Sem; but prob. akin to ^†[v15] ‘to pierce, split’ (incl. ‘opening made in the earth to plant s.th.’) and/or ^†[v16] ‘outflowing water, spring’, and perh. also ^†[v19] ‘broad path’. – Etymology suggested by EtymArab: *^†[v11] ‘to throw away, fling, strike off (a spear, etc.)’ > thereby ^†[v15] ‘split, pierce (s.th.)’ and cause a [v2] ‘gaping wound’ > ‘“gaping” eyes, wide opening (in general)’.
▪ NǦL_3 naǧīl ‘couch grass, orchard grass (Dactylis; bot.); quitch (bot.)’: no immediately obvious cognates in Sem or outside Sem. – Etymology suggested by EtymArab: *^†[v11] ‘to throw away, fling, strike off (a spear, etc.)’ > thereby ^†[v15] ‘split, pierce (s.th.)’ and cause a [v2] ‘wide opening’ > to break through this opening, ^†[v18] burst out and spread > grass that does so = [v3] ‘couch grass, orchard grass’. – For other options, cf. main entry, ↗naǧīl.
▪ NǦL_4 ‘scythe, sickle’: Among all the items ascribed to the root √NǦL, Ar minǧal is certainly the most widely discussed one. However, opinion differs considerably as to the possible origin of the word. We may distinguish two main types of theories put forward so far: (a) extra-Sem borrowing, (b) inner-Semitic development, either through inner-Sem borrowing or a common Sem origin.
Ad (a): Extra-Sem borrowing appears likely to some due to the »fact«, as e.g. Corriente2008: 101-2 has it, »that Ar minǧal does not appear to derive from a rather uncommon verb naǧala« and that reflexes of minǧal in Neo-Arabic dialects are relatively rare. (See however below for EtymArab’s ideas on possible inner-Ar dependence.) Also in favour of a borrowing from outside Sem is the scarcity of Sem verbs belonging to Sem √NGL. As a consequence, Sum, Eg, Copt, and Grk etyma have been suggested. A Sum origin is considered possible by CAD for Akk niggallu ~ ningallu ‘sickle’ (from oBab, oAss on) [whence the word may have entered Sem, then with Akk n‑ > WSem m‑; more specifically, one could imagine a development *Sum > Akk > Aram > Hbr, Ar; or *Sum > Akk > Hbr > Aram > Ar]. However, CAD does not specify the alleged Sum etymon. (VonSoden ii 1972 classified Akk niggallu ~ ningallu as »unbekannter Herkunft«, i.e., of unknown provenience, though certainly not originally Akk.) Rolland2014 first reports another theory (Ar < Copt < Grk, see below), then adds his »hypothèse personnelle« that minǧal may also be akin to Akk ikkāru ‘plowman, farm laborer; farmer’ (> Ar ↗ʔakkār ‘plowman’), which is a borrowing from Sum engar ‘irrigator, farmer’ (< en ‘lord’ + agar ‘field’ – Halloran3.0). This etymology seems problematic for phonological reasons: Rolland does not explain why minǧal should have preserved the Sum ‑ng‑, while all other items derived from Sum engar show ‑kk‑; his hypothesis presupposes a more or less direct borrowing of Ar minǧal from Sum, while ʔakkār would have gone through Akk. – A Sum connection is rejected in total by Orel&Stolbova1994 and Militarev&Stolbova2007 in view of the comparative (Sem and AfrAs) data. They think they have found enough cognates, both within and outside Sem, to justify an ultimately AfrAs origin: reconstructing Sem *mi‑/ma‑ngal‑ ‘sickle’, *n˅gil‑ ‘to mow, reap’, and Chad *n˅gi/ula(‑t) ‘sickle’ (WCh *n˅gal‑at‑ ‘sickle’, CCh *n˅g˅l‑ ‘to cut’, *n˅gi/ul(‑at)‑ ‘sickle, knife’, ECh *ʔa‑ngul‑ ‘sickle’), they postulate (1994) AfrAs *n˅gil‑ ‘to cut’, or, slightly more cautiously (2007), AfrAs *ngl ‘to reap’. In any case, the Chad evidence (see COGN) would speak against the theory that assumes a borrowing Sum > Akk > WSem – otherwise the Chad terms would have to be borrowings from Sem. – Zimmern1914 does not mention Ar minǧal or any of its Sem cognates as a borrowing from Akk. Furthermore, if the borrowing was Sum > Akk > WSem, the word-initial sound shift Akk n‑ > WSem m‑ will have to be explained. – A (Grk >) Copt > Ar etymology is reported and supported by Rolland2014, considered possible by BadawiHinds1986 (at least for EgAr mangal ‘type of large sickle’), and discussed in some detail by Corriente2008: Ar minǧal, EgAr mangal ‘sickle’ < Copt mančale ‘pickaxe, hoe’ < Grk makélē ~ mákella ‘id.’. Corriente is reluctant to accept this etymology, given that the instrument signified by the Copt and Grk words is a ‘pickaxe, hoe, mattock’, while the Ar words mean a ‘sickle’. Furthermore, against a Grk origin would speak the fact that the Egyptians were »established farmers« and one has to wonder why such a people should »borrow the name of an agricultural tool from abroad«. Therefore, Corriente concludes, it is more likely that the borrowing went the other way round and happened much earlier, i.e., from Eg into Grk and Sem. Grk would have preserved the original meaning, while the semantic shift in Sem »might be explained by a borrowing in a time when western Semites still lived mostly as nomads, scarcely interested in agricultural lore«. However plausible this may sound, Corriente does not give us the Eg word of which Copt mankʸale ~ mančale would be the successor and that could have gone into Grk and Sem. The fact is: it seems that there is no such word at all, the Eg terms for ‘pickaxe, hoe, mattock’ being rather different from Copt mančale or Grk makélē ~ mákella. – Thus, there seems to be only one way out of the dilemma: While Copt mančale may well be from Grk makélē ~ mákella, the Grk item itself should be assumed to be either a completely inner-Grk affair, or a borrowing from a Sem language, most probably Hbr maggāl or Aram maggəlā. Phonologically, this does not look impossible (although the ‑n‑ in Copt mankʸale ~ mančale would have to be explained), and the semantic distance between Sem ‘sickle; scythe’ and Grk/Copt ‘pickaxe, hoe, mattock’ is not too far. Beekes2009: 894, too, would not exclude that Grk makélē and the Arm markeł ‘mattock’ are both loans »from a common source« (which we think could well have been a Sem language). Moreover, as Ar NǦL_2 and ^†NǦL_15 show, ‘sickle, scythe’ is only a rather specialized development, while a more basic value is *‘to pierce, split’, and thereby ‘make an opening in the earth to plant s.th., till the ground’. So, while Westendorf2008 is probably wrong in assuming that Copt mankʸale ~ mančale is a loan from Ar minǧal, he may have understood that the origin of the Copt word ultimately could be Sem.
Ad (b) Sem origin and inner-Sem borrowing: It is obvious that Hbr maggāl, Syr maggǝlā ‘sickle’, Mand manglia ‘scythes’, and perh. also Akk niggallu ~ ningallu ‘sickle’, are akin to Ar minǧal. If the Akk word is a loan from Sum (see above), the similarity with the WSem words is either a mere coincidence or it was the Akk word that went into WSem. In the light of the Chad evidence, Orel&Stolbova1994/Militarev&Stolbova2007 reject the idea of a borrowing from outside Sem. If one follows their argument (see above), then a Sem *mi‑/ma‑ngal‑ ‘sickle’, *n˅gil‑ ‘to mow, reap’ may be the etymon common to both the ESem (Akk) and WSem terms, all deriving directly from one common ancestor, without inner-Sem intermediates. In contrast, Jeffery1938, for instance, thinks that Ar minǧal is an inner-Sem loan, from Hbr maggāl or Syr maggǝlā. (Jeffery explains the additional ‑n‑ in Ar minǧal as opposed to the Can forms as a common phenomenon in Ar loan-words, cf., e.g., Ar ↗kanf ‘(palm of the) hand’ < Syr kappā, or Ar ↗qunfuḏ ‘hedgehog’ from Hbr qippōd, Syr qupp^əḏā, or Ar ↗ḫinzīr from Hbr ḥzīr, Syr ḥzīrā, etc.). Fraenkel1886 tends to make Ar minǧal dependent on Syr maggəlā (with dissimilation of Syr *‑gg‑ > Ar ‑nǧ‑) because, according to him, the Ar vb. naǧala only means ‘to pierce’ (^†NǦL_15), and the value ‘sickle’ would be difficult to derive from ‘to pierce’. (As the disambiguation section above shows, Fraenkel is completely wrong here: first, because there are many more values than ‘to pierce’; and second, because the sickles used in ancient times may have looked similar to some kind of pickaxes, or hoes, or mattocks, so that his argument is not very strong. Furthermore, the tool designated by a Sem n.instr. (Militarev2002: Sem *mi‑/ma‑ngal‑) formed from the root *NGL was not necessarily always a sickle, but may at some – unfortunately still unattested – stage also have been a sickle-shaped hoe; see below.) – BDB1906 list Hbr maggāl under the hypothetical root Hbr √NGL – there is no corresponding verb, which is why the root itself is said to be »of unknown meaning«! – and mention Ar ^†naǧala, vb. I, ‘to strike, split, pierce’ (^†NǦL_14, ^†NǦL_15) as a probable, though »very infrequent«, cognate; Ar minǧal is put alongside with Hbr maggāl although the Ar word is »possibly from Aram«. – Leslau1987: 392 thinks Ar minǧal is derived from Ar naǧala in the sense of ‘to remove the skin from a slaughtered animal’ (^†NǦL_9); however, he does not regard this as an exclusively Ar value but as part of a wider Sem picture to which also Soq ngl ‘to make go out’, Syr naggel ‘to remove’, Gz nagala ‘to be uprooted, roll, roll up, make into a ball’ belong, so that, for Leslau, the Sem ‘scythe, sickle’ etymologically is the *‘instrument that removes, uproots’. – In our opinion, the latter could reflect the stage in the semantic development of items from the root NGL/NǦL in which a Sem word was loaned into Copt and/or Grk, hence the meaning ‘pickaxe, hoe, mattock’, i.e., tool with which the soil is cultivated (*pierced, split, opened, widened, cf. ^†[v15]). – There seems to have been, in earlier research on minǧal, a kind of “filter bubble” that tended to believe that the semantic distance between ‘sickle’ and the other values found in the Ar root was too big to be explained by derivation; therefore, Sum, Eg, Copt, Grk etyma were voluntarily accepted. But as the above discussion has shown, these etymologies are often rather problematic, so that a dependence of the Sem ‘sickles’ on the value ^†‘to strike, split, pierce; to till (the ground)’ should not be excluded (although the vb. is »rather uncommon« with this meaning, as Corriente2008 has it, or even »very infrequent«, as BDB1906 marks it). –
The Etymology suggested by EtymArab combines elements from both theories discussed above. We think that the term for ‘sickle’ was borrowed from Sum into Akk, then from Akk into WSem, where it however began to interact with an already existing root √NGL/NǦL. Until the moment of borrowing, semantics in the Sem root had developed along the line: ^†[v11] ‘to throw away, fling, strike off’ > ^†[v15] ‘to split, pierce (s.th. with a spear)’. From here, two alternatives are possible: a) …> ‘to split = to dig up the earth, till the ground’ > tool used to do so = *‘hoe’ (no attestions for the tool, only for the vb.); b) … > ‘to split = ^†[v9] = to rip up, skin (a slaughtered animal) from the hocks’ > instrument to do so. When the ‘sickle’ then was borrowed into Sem, the term was eventually adapted in form to Sem word patterns (causing initial Sum/Akk n‑ > WSem m‑) and began to interfer with the earlier meanings ‘instrument to pierce, till the ground’ or ‘instrument to skin an animal’, until it superseded as ‘scythe, sickle’.
▪ NǦL_5 ‘bench vice’: BadawiHinds1986 gives the origin of EgAr mangalaẗ as Grk méngelē. This is probably a variant of μέγγενη ~ μέγκενη /méŋgeni/ ‘vice’, according to Wiktionary a loan from Tu méngene ‘press, vice, screw-jack, clamp’ which, according to Nişanyan_27Jan2018, is in its turn from modGrk μάγγανο(ν) /máŋgano(n)/ ~ μαγγάνι /maŋgáni/ ‘calender, machine to calender cloth or linen, mangle, press; winch, windlass’ < (Nişanyan) oGrk μάγγανον /máŋganon/, lit. ‘means for charming or bewitching others, philtre’, but then also ‘block of a pulley’ (LiddellScott1940).
▪ NǦL_6 ‘anglification’: ʔangalaẗ, vn.f., from vb. ʔangala ‘to anglify’, neologism formed after regular pattern for 4-rad. vb.s (FaʕLaLa) from a hypothetical ↗√ʔNGL.
▪ NǦL_7 ‘gospel’: lw., prob. via Gz wangēl from Grk εὐαγγέλιον euangélion ‘god tidings, gospel’, sometimes treated lexicographically as if from a hypothetical ↗√ʔNGL.
▪ NǦL_8 ʔangūlā ‘Angola’: from the n.pr.geogr. (Engl?) Angola, sometimes treated lexicographically as if from a hypothetical ↗√ʔNGL.
▪ ^†NǦL_9 ‘to remove the skin from a slaughtered animal’: Leslau1987: 392 thinks that with this value, Ar naǧala is cognate to Soq ngl ‘to make go out’, Syr naggel ‘to remove’, Gz nagala ‘to be uprooted, roll, roll up, make into a ball’ as well as [v4] Ar minǧal ‘sickle’ (*‘instrument that removes, uproots’). – Ehret1989 #57 saw similarities between this and other Ar vb.s such as ^†naǧaba ‘to remove the bark from a tree’, ↗naǧara ‘to cut or plane wood’, ^†naǧafa ‘to shave or polish an arrow’, ^†naǧafa ‘to cut down, pull out’, and ^†naǧā (naǧw) ‘to cut down a tree and strip off its branches, skin a camel’ and reconstructed a bi-cons. pre-protSem root *NG ‘to strip’, from which all these values are thought to be derived by the addition a modifying third radical. – Ehret does not go farther back behind the pre-protSem stage, but the overall situation in Sem and AfrAs seems to allow the assumption of 1-2 earlier stages (etymology suggested by EtymArab): ^†[v11] ‘to throw away, fling, strike off’ > ^†[v15] ‘to split, pierce (s.th. with a spear)’ > ^†[v9] ‘to rip up, skin (a slaughtered animal) from the hocks’. In this way, ^†[v9] could be seen as going back to Sem *n˅gil‑ ‘to throw’ and, ultimately, AfrAs *n˅gol‑ ‘id.’, as suggested by Orel&Stolbova1994 (see ^†[v11], below).
▪ ^†NǦL_10 ‘to blot out, erase (a writing), wipe the writing-tablet’: no obvious cognates. – According to Ehret1989, with this meaning Ar naǧala is derived by extension in *‑l from pre-protSem *NG ‘to strip’. – Etymology suggested by EtymArab: probably semantic extension of the preceding (^†[v9]), where the blotting out is seen as a kind of scraping off the skin from a slaughtered animal; alternatively, erasing a writing or wiping a writing-tablet could be regarded as a new [v2] “opening” in the sense of new ‘beginning’.
▪ ^†NǦL_11 ‘to throw away, fling, strike off (with a foot or leg, e.g., pebbles) (vb. I); ? to remove water from the foot of a wall (vb. VIII)’: This is perh. the same as ^†[v14] ‘to strike, beat, push, drive’. – Cf., however, Orel&Stolbova1994 #1897 and Militarev&Stolbova2007 where Ar naǧala, i, is thought to derive from a Sem *n˅gil‑ (OrSt) or *n˅gul‑ (MSt2007) ‘to throw’, a reconstruction that has no other foundations in Sem than the Ar evidence² but seems to be justified nevertheless, in the authors’ eyes, in the light of what they think to be cognates in WCh *ngwal‑ ‘to throw’, Sem and WCh both deriving from AfrAs *n˅gul‑ (MSt2007) or *n˅gol‑ (OrSt1994) ‘to throw’. While Orel&Stolbova and Militarev&Stolbova assume this ‘throwing away’ to be one out of two basic values, EtymArab tends to regard it as the one on which also these authors’ second basic value, *‘to cut’ (> ‘sickle, to reap’, see [v4] above), may depend, given that ‘cutting’ is very similar to ‘splitting, piercing (s.th., with a spear)’, a value that may have developed from an earlier *‘throwing away’ along the lines described below under ^†NǦL_15.
▪ ^†NǦL_12 ‘to ill-treat’: no obvious cognates. – Etymology suggested by EtymArab: ^†[v11] ‘to throw away, fling, strike off’ > ^†[v14] ‘to strike, beat, push, drive’ > ^†[v12] ‘to ill-treat’.
▪ ^†NǦL_13 ‘marcher d’un pas vigoureux’: no obvious cognates. – Etymology suggested by EtymArab: value immediately dependent on ^†[v11] ‘to throw away, fling, strike off’, an activity that is accompanied by some violent movement or carried out with some vehemence.
▪ ^†NǦL_14 ‘to strike, beat, push, drive’: ‘to strike’ is enumerated in BDB1906 alongside with ‘to split, pierce’ (cf. next item, [v15]) as a basic value of the »very infrequent« Ar vb. naǧala. It is perh. identical also with ^†[v11] ‘to throw away, fling, strike off (with a foot or leg, e.g., pebbles)’. – Etymology suggested by EtymArab: value immediately dependent on, or perh. even identical with, ^†[v11] ‘to throw away, fling, strike off’, as this latter seems to be carried out with the aim of driving s.o./s.th. away or keeping s.o./s.th. off; so there is some violence/vehemence involved, as in ^†[v13].
▪ ^†NǦL_15 ‘to split, pierce (s.th., bi‑ with a spear)’: This value is given by BDB1906 as the basic meaning of Ar naǧala. Although the vb. is said to be “very infrequent” in Ar, the authors consider it as one possible source of [v4] Ar minǧal ‘sickle’ (which many regard as a loanword however; see above, NǦL_4). Orel&Stolbova1994 would derive minǧal from a Sem vb. *n˅gil‑ ‘to mow, reap’, the assumed origin of which – AfrAs *n˅gil‑ ‘to cut’ – would be very similar to the idea of Ar ‘to split, pierce’. However that may be, the ‘splitting, piercing’ of ^†[v15] is very likely related to [v2] ‘wide (eyes); open, gaping wound; earth opened to plant s.th.’, ^†[v16] ‘outflowing water’, ^†[v18] ‘to appear, emanate; to disclose, manifest’, and prob. also ^†[v19] ‘broad path’. – Etymology suggested by EtymArab: Value [v15] may be immediately dependent on ^†[v11] ‘to throw away (pebbles, a spear, etc.)’, as esp. the spear that is thrown away may cause a ^†[v15] ‘splitting, piercing’ in the person or object hit by it. In its turn, this ‘splitting, piercing’ can be the cause of the ‘wide opening, gaping’ of [v2] that is an important semantic node from which many other values developed. If the ‘splitting, piercing’ is not produced in a body but in the soil, the instrument that does so and that would be called minǧal would be a ‘pickaxe, hoe, mattock’, a value not attested in Sem but perh. realized in the stage of semantic development where the word went into Grk and Copt (see discussion on NǦL_4, above).
▪ ^†NǦL_16 ‘(n.) outflowing water, spring; (vb.) 1 to abound with springs of water; 2 to become swampy (ground)’: this value corresponds nicely to Ǧabal2012’s bi-cons. Ar root nucleus ↗*NǦ‑ ‘break through, eruption of s.th. thick but not solid from inside’, which is similar to Ehret1995’s pre-protSem *NG ‘to seep, ooze’ (↗*NǦ‑_2), reconstructed on the basis of similarities between ^†[v16] and Ar ^†naǧǧa ‘to bleed, suppurate’, ^†naǧaḫa ‘to bring wind and rain’, ↗naǧida ‘to drip with perspiration’, ^†naǧafa ‘to milk (a sheep) well’, and ^†naǧw ‘pouring cloud’. Together with Cush *ʔangʷ‑/ʔungʷ‑ ‘breast’ (from secreting of milk by the breast) and perh. Eg ngsgs ‘to overflow’, the author suggests a common origin in a hypothetical AfrAs *‑nugʷ‑ ‘to seep’. – Given that Ehret’s reconstruction beyond the Ar/pre-protSem stage cannot build on strong evidence, one could also think of a semantic development along the following line (etymology suggested by EtymArab): ^†[v11] ‘to throw away, fling, strike off (a spear, etc.)’ > thereby ^†[v15] ‘split, pierce (s.th.)’ and cause a [v2] ‘wide opening’ > ^†[v16] ‘opening through which water flows out, spring’.
▪ ^†NǦL_17 ‘to combat, fight | combattre, en venir aux mains les uns avec les autres’: no immediate cognates in Sem. – Etymology suggested by EtymArab: ^†[v11] ‘to throw away, fling, strike off (a spear, etc.)’ > ^†[v15] ‘to split, pierce (s.th., with a spear)’ > thereby cause a [v2] ‘wide opening through which bursts out what is inside’ > ^†[v17] ‘to combat, fight’ (= *‘to “explode, erupt”, burst out into the enemy’). Alternatively, one could think of a “short cut”: ^†[v11] ‘to throw away, fling, strike off’ > thereby ^†[v14] ‘to beat, push, hit’ > (s.o. with a spear, etc.) > ^†[v17] ‘to combat, fight’.
▪ ^†NǦL_18 ‘hervorbringen, ans Licht ziehen, bekannt machen | tirer, extraire ou emmener | to disclose, manifest (vb. I); to show o.s., appear (vb. VIII), ‘pousser de dessous terre, paraître à la surface du sol (vb. X)’: Semantic similarity between ^†NǦL_18 and the N-stem (vb. VII) of ǦLW/Y, ĭnǧalà, ‘to reveal itself, be disclosed, become manifest’, is undeniable, so that a dependence of the former on the latter, or an overlapping, should not be too quickly rejected as unlikely or impossible. (One will have to find out whether there are perh. more such cases where vb.s with R₁=N show semantic resemblance/overlapping with form VII of defective or geminated vb.s.). For the time being, it seems safer to assume kinship with other items from NǦL, esp. ^†[v16], with which ^†[v18] shares the idea of s.th. emerging from inside, hence also Ǧabal2012’s *‘break through, eruption of s.th. thick but not solid from inside’. – Accordingly, EtymArab suggests the following etymology: ^†[v11] ‘to throw away, fling, strike off (a spear, etc.)’ > ^†[v15] ‘to split, pierce (s.th., with a spear)’ > thereby cause a [v2] ‘wide opening through which bursts out what is inside’ > ^†[v18] ‘to show o.s., appear’.
▪ ^†NǦL_19 ‘broad path’: no obvious cognates, and difficult to connect even inside the Ar root. But if this value is akin to the others above, then it may have developed along the following line (etymology suggested by EtymArab): ^†[v11] ‘to throw away (a spear, etc.), fling, strike off’ > ^†[v15] ‘to split, pierce (s.th., with a spear)’ > i.e., cause a ^†[v2] ‘wide opening’ > ^†[v19] ‘broad path’ (a path that ‘opens up’ in front of you).

1. Cf. Eg ngȝ ‘töten’, ngȝ ‘brechen; zerbrechen’, ngy ‘zerbrechen; öffnen; hervorbrechen’ – ThLÆ. 2. But should one perh. compare the Gz, Syr and Soq evidence put forward by Leslau2006?

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naǧal‑ نجَل , u (naǧl)

ID … • Sw – • BP … • APD … • © SG | 15Feb2021

√NǦL

vb., I

to beget, sire, father (a son) – WehrCowan1979

▪ Probably dependent on the idea of a *‘wide opening (through which s.th. flows out, spring)’ (cf. ↗ʔanǧalᵘ), itself seen as the result of some *‘splitting, piercing’, caused by *‘throwing away, flinging, striking off (a spear, etc.)’.
▪ For the latter, Orel&Stolbova1994 reconstructed Sem *n˅gil‑ ‘to throw’ < AfrAs *n˅gol‑ ‘id.’ as hypothetical predecessors.

▪ first attested 628 CE in a verse by al-ʔAʕšà al-Kabīr – HDAL (1Jun2020)
▪ In ClassAr, naǧl is not only attested as ‘offspring, descendants’, but also as ‘water oozing from the ground; flowing water; crowd’ – Hava1899.

▪ Leslau1987: 391 regards as “doubtful” Dillmann’s and Barth’s (1893: 33) theory that would connect Ar naǧl with Gz nagad ‘tribe, clan, kin, stock, kindred, progeny, lineage, family’.
▪ Leslau1987: 137: Equally or even more unlikely is the derivation, suggested by Praetorius1879: 77, of Gz dəngəl ‘chaste (young man), celibate (monk), virgin’ from Ar naǧala ‘to beget’.
▪ The value may be dependent on ^†[v15] ‘to split, pierce’ and/or ^†[v16] ‘outflowing water, spring’ of root ↗NǦL.

▪ As none of the cognates suggested by Dillmann, Barth and Praetorius (see COGN) are particularly convincing, the most probable etymology seems to be, for the time being, a derivation from the notion of an *‘opening through which water flows out, spring’ or a *‘wide opening’ in general, both of which are attested values within ↗√NǦL, cf. ^†[v16] and [v2], respectively; see also ↗ʔanǧalᵘ ‘wide open (eyes), gaping (wound)’. naǧl ‘offspring’ would then either refer to the descendants who “spring” from the same source, or signify the product of the *‘ejaculation of sperma’.
▪ In either case, the etymology matches quite well Gabal’s and Ehret’s idea that this Ar √NǦL should be regarded as an extension in *‑l from a bi-consonantal root nucleus *NǦ‑ (↗NǦ_2), the meaning of which Ehret1995 gave as *‘to seep, ooze’ while Ǧabal2012 described it as the ‘breaking through [and welling/pouring out, i.e., eruption] of s.th. thick, but not solid, from within s.th.’. Interestingly enough, in ClassAr texts naǧl is not only attested as ‘offspring’, but also as ^†‘water oozing from the ground; flowing water’.
▪ The idea of an ‘opening’ may, in its turn, go back to that of *‘splitting, piercing’, from a still earlier *‘throwing away, flinging, striking off (a spear, etc.)’, d.i., values ^†[v15] and ^†[v11], respectively, in ↗NǦL. For the latter, Orel&Stolbova1994 saw an AfrAs dimension: < Sem *n˅gil‑ ‘to throw’, from AfrAs *n˅gol‑ ‘id.’.
▪ There may have happened some contamination with ↗NSL (nasala ‘to beget, procreate, father’, nasl ‘progeny, offspring, descendants’).

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► naǧl, pl. ʔanǧāl, n., offspring, descendant, scion, son; progeny, issue: vn. I.

naǧīl نجيل

ID … • Sw – • BP … • APD … • © SG | 15Feb2021

√NǦL

couch grass, orchard grass (Dactylis; bot.); quitch (bot.) – WehrCowan1979

▪ In addition to naǧīl, which is attested from pre-Islamic times on, there is also a LevAr expression for ‘couch grass’, šilš al-ʔinǧīl. It is hard to decide whether naǧīl may be a ‘re-Arabization’ of the dialectal (šilš al‑) ʔinǧīl or whether the latter is a ‘Christian’ re-interpretation of the former.
▪ However, given that naǧīl also exists in EgAr and has produced denominal vb.s there, EtymArab thinks that LevAr šilš al-ʔinǧīl is secondary. For naǧīl, EtymArab therefore suggests a genuine etymology in which the plant is the *‘grass that breaks through (the soil), “springs” from the earth, and spreads’ (cf. ^†[v18] in root entry ↗√NǦL), itself based on the more general notion of a *‘wide opening’ ([v2], cf. ↗ʔanǧalᵘ ‘wide open [eyes], gaping [wound]’), from *‘to split, pierce (s.th.)’ (^†[v15]), from an original *‘to throw away, fling, strike off (a spear, etc.)’ (^†[v11]).

▪ first attested 609 CE in a verse by Ṭufayl b. ʕAwf al-ʕAnawī – HDAL (1Jun2020)

▪ BadawiHinds1986: EgAr nigīl ‘any of a number of types of grass (including couch grass, Bermuda grass and orchard grass), naggil (vb. II) ‘1 to free of nigīl; 2 to grass, produce grass, become grassy’.

▪ In addition to standard Ar naǧīl ‘bitter plant sought by camels; bastard dittany (bot.)’, Hava1899 lists, under the same root lemma NǦL, also the item šilš al-ʔinǧīl ‘couch grass’, marked as LevAr. This marking as dialectal and the naming of the grass after the Gospel, al‑ ↗ʔinǧīl, may lead to the assumption that naǧīl is just a ‘re-Arabization’ of what originally was a Christian dialectal coining, carried out on the foreign expression to make it conform to a ‘genuine’ Ar root. Most probably it was the other way round, however, and šilš al-ʔinǧīl is a local/regional re-interpretation, originating in Christian circles, of the fuṣḥà term naǧīl. Two points speak in favour of this theory: (a) naǧīl is attested already in pre-Islamic poetry; (b) naǧīl has a cognate in EgAr nigīl, which also has produced some denominative verbs. – Both facts suggest that the term for a specific type of grass was more widespread than only in the Levant.
▪ Although BadawiHinds1986 classify EgAr nigīl and EgAr nagl ‘son’ as from different roots (marked ¹NGL and ²NGL, respectively), EtymArab still thinks the two items, as well as most others in the root, belong together; suggested etymology (for the whole picture, cf. ↗NǦL): *^†[v11] ‘to throw away, fling, strike off (a spear, etc.)’ > thereby ^†[v15] ‘split, pierce (s.th.)’ and cause a [v2] ‘wide opening’ > to break through this opening, ^†[v18] burst out and spread > grass that does so = [v3] ‘couch grass, orchard grass’.
▪ For *‘throwing away, flinging, striking off (a spear, etc.)’, Orel&Stolbova1994 reconstructed Sem *n˅gil‑ ‘to throw’ < AfrAs *n˅gol‑ ‘id.’ as hypothetical predecessors.

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ʔanǧalᵘ أنْجلُ , f. naǧlāʔᵘ

√NǦL

adj.

large-eyed; large, big, wide (eye); gaping (wound) – WehrCowan1979

▪ Probably dependent on the idea of a *‘wide opening’ (cf. also ↗naǧala ‘to beget; offspring’), itself seen as the result of some *‘splitting, piercing’ (? cf. ↗minǧal ‘sickle’), caused by *‘throwing away, flinging, striking off (a spear, etc.)’.
▪ For the latter, Orel&Stolbova1994 reconstructed Sem *n˅gil‑ ‘to throw’ < AfrAs *n˅gol‑ ‘id.’ as hypothetical predecessors.

▪ first attested 517 CE in a verse by Ǧblẗ (?) b. al-Ḥāriṯ (al-Qālī, ʔAmālī) – HDAL (1Jun2020)

▪ No immediate cognates in Sem or outside. But perhaps akin to other values within ↗√NǦL (see particularly values ^†[v15] and ^†[v16]). See also section DISC, below.

▪ ʔanǧalᵘ does not seem to have cognates with similar semantics in Sem or outside. But it is prob. akin to other values of ↗√NǦL, now obsolete, esp. ^†naǧala ‘to pierce, split (s.th., with a spear); to make an opening in the ground (to plant s.th.), till the ground’ (^†[v15]). The notion of an *‘opening’ is also present in ^†naǧl ‘outflowing water, spring’ or DaṯAr naǧīlaẗ ‘spring, well’ (^†[v16]), in naǧala ‘to beget; offspring’, and, perh., in an obsolete (and hitherto unattested) meaning of ↗minǧal, now ‘sickle’ but at some stage perh. also *‘tool used to make openings in the soil to till the ground’.
▪ The (wide) ‘opening’ can perh. be connected to Ehret1995’s pre-protSem bi-consonantal root *√NG ‘to seep, ooze’ and Ǧabal2012’s bi-cons. Ar root nucleus *√NǦ‑ ‘breaking through [and welling/pouring out, i.e., eruption] of s.th. thick, but not solid, from within s.th.’.
▪ Etymology suggested by EtymArab: *^†[v11] ‘to throw away, fling, strike off (a spear, etc.)’ > thereby ^†[v15] ‘split, pierce (s.th.)’ and cause a [v2] ‘gaping wound’, hence also ‘opening’ (in general) > ‘“gaping”, wide open eyes’.

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► ṭaʕnaẗ naǧlāʔᵘ, n.f., a blow causing a gaping wound; heavy blow or thrust

minǧal مِنْجل , pl. manāǧilᵘ

√NǦL

scythe, sickle – WehrCowan1979

▪ Among all the items ascribed to the root √NǦL, Ar minǧal is certainly the most widely discussed. While several scholars assume an external source as the word’s most probable etymology – either extra-Sem (Sum, Eg, Copt < Grk) or inner-Sem (Hbr, Aram, ? < Akk), others make it dependent on values attested for items ‘deriving’ from the same Ar root √NǦL. For EtymArab, two alternatives seem to be the most likely solutions:
▪ Sum > Akk (? > Aram or Hbr) > Ar: This option has to regard the extra-Sem (Chad) parallels that Orel&Stolbova and Militarev&Stolbova take for genuine ‘cognates’, as borrowings from Sem, most probably Ar. From Akk, the ‘sickle’ may have made its way into Ar directly or via Aram or Hbr. A strong point in the theory is the scarcity of *NGL items throughout Sem; at the same time, a weak point is the fact that there are some of those *NGL lexemes, even in SSem, and quite many of them in Ar itself, the semantics of which can hardly be explained as deriving from ‘sickle’ alone.
▪ AfrAs > Sem (? > Akk, Hbr, Aram) > Ar: This option grants Orel&Stolbova’s and Militarev&Stolbova’s Chad parallels the status of genuine cognates and has no problems with the inner-Sem *NGL items either. The question here are mainly the inner-Sem relations, given the semantic diversity within the root (‘solved’ by some through the assumption of at least two homonymous roots).
▪ For the time being, EtymArab favours a combination of the two options, i.e., a loan Sum > Akk > WSem overlapping/crossing with the semantics of a Sem √NGL predating the borrowing. Before the borrowing, the root seems to have developed along the line (for value numbering cf. root entry ↗NǦL): ^†[v11] ‘to throw away, fling, strike off’ > ^†[v15] ‘to split, pierce (s.th. with a spear) – and from here, two alternatives are possible: a) …> to split = ‘to dig up the earth, till the ground’ > (instrument to do so =) *‘hoe, mattock’ > tool that looks similar to such an instrument = ‘scythe, sickle’; b) the development may have gone through ^†[v9] to split = ‘to rip up, skin (a slaughtered animal) from the hocks’ > instrument to do so > instrument to carry out similar operations/movements = ‘scythe, sickle’.
▪ EtymArab tends to exclude the Eg origin suggested by Corriente2008, and also regards the assumption of a Copt (< Grk) source as improbable. Rather, the Copt and Grk words are from a Sem (Hbr, Aram) source (as already suggested by Černý1976).

▪ first attested 600 CE in a verse by ʕAntaraẗ b. Šaddād – HDAL (1Jun2020)

▪ Kazimirski1860: Ar ^†naǧala ‘faucher (les céréales), labourer (la terre)’ (↗NǦL_15]).
▪ Fraenkel1886: Ar minǧal < ^†naǧala ‘to pierce’ (↗NǦL_15]).
▪ Leslau1987: 392 thinks Ar minǧal is cognate to Ar naǧala ‘to remove the skin from a slaughtered animal’ (↗NǦL_9), to which he also puts Soq ngl ‘to make go out’, Syr naggel ‘to remove’, Gz nagala ‘to be uprooted, roll, roll up, make into a ball’ (‘scythe, sickle’ < *‘instrument that removes, uproots’); but he also thinks that it is possible that Gz nagala ‘to roll up’ is to be separated from Gz nagala ‘to be uprooted’.
▪ Orel&Stolbova1994, Militarev&Stolbova2007 (et al.): (? Akk niggallu, ningallu,) Hbr maggāl, JudAram maggǝlā, Syr maggəlā, maggaltā ‘sickle’, Mand manglia ‘scythes’. – Outside Sem: (WCh) Warji ngǝlatǝ-na, Kariya ngalǝta, Miya ngǝlatǝ ‘sickle’; (CCh) Gude ŋgíla ‘knife’, Nzangi ngîla ‘knife, sword’; (ECh) Migama ʔângùl ‘sickle’.
▪ Corriente2008: EgAr mangal, Ar minǧal »do not appear to derive from a rather uncommon verb *naǧala«, so a Copt origin should not be excluded; but more likely from Eg.
▪ Westendorf2008: Copt mankʸale ~ mančale ‘Hacke, Schaufel’ < Ar minǧal.
▪ Rolland2014: from Copt mančale ‘pickaxe, hoe’, from Grk makélē ~ mákella ‘dto.’.
▪ Rolland2014 (»hypothèse personnelle«): also akin to Akk ikkaru ‘plowman, farm laboror; farmer’ < Sum engar ‘irrigator, farmer’ (en ‘lord’ + agar ‘field’ – Halloran3.0).

▪ There seems to have been, in earlier research on minǧal, a kind of “filter bubble” suggesting that the semantic distance between ‘sickle’ and other values realized in the Ar root √NǦL was too big to be explained by derivation; therefore, the idea that it could be a borrowing was readily accepted, and Sum, Eg, Copt and Grk etyma have been proposed. Apart from the semantic distance just mentioned, the adherents of an extra-Sem origin also point to the scarcity of *NGL items throughout Sem – there are clear cognates only in Hbr and Aram, while the relation to some Gz lexemes is obscure and far from reliable. At the same time, a weak point is the fact that there are some of those *NGL lexemes, even in SSem, and quite many of them in Ar itself, the semantics of which can hardly be explained as deriving from ‘sickle’ alone. Moreover, there may also be extra-Sem cognates (see below).
▪ The weakest of the borrowing hypotheses are probably those that assume a Copt < Grk or an Eg origin, for the simple reason that none of them accounts a) for the shift of meaning from ‘pickaxe, hoe, mattock’ (Eg, Copt, Grk) to ‘sickle’ (Ar, Hbr, Aram, Akk), and b) for the existence of the extra-Ar ‘sickles’ (Hbr, Aram, Akk) and the many Ar and Sem *NGL items, with a large variety of meanings, suggesting a deep temporal dimension that would have allowed for the development of such a diversity. While Copt mankʸale ~ mančale may indeed be a loan from Grk makélē ~ mákella, it is hardly convincing, in the light of the pre-Islamic attestations of Ar minǧal as well as its Can parallels, that the Copt word should be the source of Ar minǧal – the word existed in Ar before the Islamic expansion to Egypt and intense Copt-Ar contacts. Corriente’s idea that both the Ar and the Grk item might go back to a common Eg (i.e., pre-Copt) etymon can sound more plausible at the first instance. On a closer look, however, it turns out that while Eg, as the language of experienced farmers, of course has a number of words for ‘sickle’ (ȝzḫ, ḫȝb ‘Sichel’, mȝ ‘sichelförmige Holzstange’ – TLÆ) as well as for ‘pickaxe, hoe, mattock’ (‘Breitblatthacke’ – TLÆ) or ‘chisel’ (mǧȝ.t, ḫnr – TLÆ), none of these qualify as possible ancestors of Grk makélē ~ mákella or Ar minǧal.³ Therefore, a more likely scenario here is: Eg was not involved at all; the Grk word is a loan from Sem (Hbr maggāl, Aram maggǝlā), and Copt mankʸale ~ mančale a borrowing from Grk, perh. later influenced by Ar phonology (explaining Copt ‑nc‑/‑ng‑ instead of Grk ‑k‑ < Aram ‑gg‑).⁴ The semantic difference between Sem ‘sickle’ and Grk/Copt ‘pickaxe, hoe, mattock’ could be due to a loan at a time when the Sem etymon still also signified an tool used to till the ground. It is not attested as such in any Sem language; but Ar knows the vb. naǧala also with the meaning ‘to till the ground’ (see below), so that the Sem n.instr. formed from a NGL vb., at the time of its borrowing into Grk, may indeed have signified something like a ‘pickaxe, hoe, mattock’. As Beekes2009 observes, the variant mákella of Grk makélē points to an early borrowing (pre-Grk *‑alʸa), and the cognate Arm markeł ‘mattock’ could indicate that Grk makélē and Arm markeł are »from a common source« (which we think could well have been a Sem language, e.g., Aram). The Sem origin may also help to explain the formal and semantic similarity between Grk makélē ~ mákella and Grk díkella ‘mattock, two-pronged how’ (dí‑ ‘two’ + kellō ‘to drive on, run a ship to land, put to shore, into harbour’) as the result of the cross that has been assumed but for which, until now, »a convincing explanation has not yet been found« (Beekes2009: ibid.).⁵
▪ In contrast to the Copt < Grk or the Eg etymologies, discussed in the preceding paragraph, both the Sum and the AfrAs > Sem connection have a much higher degree of plausibility – if perh. only in combination with each other. In marking Akk niggallu ~ ningallu ‘sickle’ as a word »of foreign origin«, vonSoden seems to be reluctant to assume a specifically Sum source; irrespective of this, however, it is clear that he thinks the word is not genuine Akk. CAD explicitly identifies the source as Sum (though without naming the Sum word itself; would that be níŋ‑ŋál(‑la) ‘sickle’, as given by Halloran_3.0? Semantics not confirmed by PSD, which renders Sum níŋ‑ŋál(‑la) as ‘possessions’! – Rolland’s »hypothèse personelle« that Akk niggallu ~ ningallu is from Sum engar ‘farmer’ sounds slightly far-fetched and is phonologically problematic). A borrowing from Sum into Akk would make sense also from the cultural-historical point of view: it sounds only natural that the Sem nomads who immigrated into Mesopotamia from the west integrated important agricultural terminology from the language of the experienced Sum farmers into their own idiom. However, as mentioned above, an exclusively Sum etymology can neither explain the large semantic variety within the Sem root NGL nor the AfrAs parallels – it is impossible to make all this dependent on only one initial Sum > Akk borrowing. Although Zimmern1914 does not mention Akk as a source of any WSem NGL item, the semantic and phonological similarity between Akk niggallu ~ ningallu and Hbr maggāl, Aram maggəlā and Ar minǧal is so high that some kind of relation can be taken as a given. However, how exactly the items are related among each other, is difficult or impossible to decide. The borrowing may have happened independently for each of the recipient languages (i.e., Akk > Hbr, Akk > Aram, and Akk > Ar, separately) or first into Hbr or Aram and from there into Ar. In the first case, ‑nǧ‑ in Ar minǧal would be directly from Akk ‑ng‑, in the second, it would be the result of dissimilation of Hbr or Aram ‑gg‑ to Ar ‑nǧ‑. In all these cases, initial Akk ni‑ would have become ma‑/mi‑, probably to make the loanword conform to familiar noun patterns (like the Ar miC₁C₂aC₃ pattern for nomina instrumenti). But even if one assumes a Sum > Akk > WSem borrowing, the semantic variety within WSem NGL as well as the extra-Sem (Chad) parallels remain to be explained. For EtymArab, the most convincing solution to this problem is the assumption of a root √NGL in Sem that predates the borrowing from Akk into WSem so that the borrowed word was interpreted as if from the already existing root √NGL (Militarev2002 suggested Sem *mi‑/ma‑ngal‑). This would explain not only the existence of the Chad parallels but also the replacement of initial Akk n‑ with WSem m‑. It may also account for the difference in semantics between the Copt and Grk words (‘pickaxe, hoe, mattock’) and the WSem ones (‘sickle’): one could assume that Grk magélē ~ mágella was the etymon of Copt mancela but was itself a loan from Hbr maggāl or Aram maggəlā at a time when the WSem words still meant something like ‘pickaxe, hoe, mattock’, but that this value later changed to become ‘sickle’ when WSem came into contact with the Akk niggallu ~ ningallu ‘sickle’. In this scenario, Hbr, Aram, and Ar may have lost their original value, which, however, at some time, may indeed still have existed: for Ar, for instance, one can easily assume the existence of a n.instr. *minǧal from an Ar vb. naǧala in the sense (now obsolete, but attested for earlier times) of ‘to till the ground’ (see ^†[v15] in root entry ↗√NǦL), lit., to make a naǧl, i.e., an ‘opening in the earth to plant s.th.’. minǧal is not attested in that meaning, but naǧala and naǧl are.⁶ Moreover, both are probably the result of a semantic shift (owing to the Neolithic revolution and the introduction of agriculture?) from a still earlier ^†‘to split, pierce (s.th., bi‑ with a spear)’ (attested as such in Ar, too, and thought to be the Ar vb.’s most elementary value by Fraenkel1886). – The question that remains to be solved in this theory is the existence of the Chadic parallels meaning ‘sickle’, ‘knife’ or ‘sword’. If ‘sickle’ is not the original meaning in Sem and if both Sem and Chad were from a common AfrAs source, then the Chad items shouldn’t mean ‘sickle’ but *‘instrument to pierce’ or, more specifically, *‘tool used to till the ground’. So, are the Chad parallels perh. no genuine cognates but borrowings from Sem? Or the results of a crossing of a borrowing with earlier semantics, similar to the changes that the Sem words underwent after the borrowing from Sum?

3. The only words that come close to Grk makélē ~ mákella, both phonologically and semantically, are Eg mǧȝ.t ‘chisel’ (ErmanGrapow1921: ‘Meißel, Grabstichel’, > Copt mače ‘chisel, axe, pick’) and, perh., an unidentified Eg ancestor of Copt maḥoul ‘chisel, pick’ – CDO. Both are as unlikely as to imagine Grk makélē ~ mákella as an Eg+Grk composite, from Eg mȝ ‘sichelförmige Holzstange’ + Grk kellō, in analogy to díkella ‘mattock, two-pronged how’. 4. Cf. Vycichl1983 who holds that Copt mankʸale »est certainement d’origine grecque (mákella), peut-être influencé par un terme sémitique.« 5. Cf. Černý1976 who argues that Copt mankʸale ‘pick, hoe’ »might have been as to its meaning influenced by Grk mákella (or makélē), but must come, as its form shows, from Sem […]. From Sem comes evidently also Grk mákella ‘pick-axe with one point’ though Greeks felt the word to come from mía ‘one’ and kéllō ‘to drive on’, and formed díkella ‘two-pronged hoe’ (dís ‘twice’, and kéllō)«, an opinion suggested already earlier by Marco Kabis, “Auctarium lexici coptici Amedei Peyron”, Zeitschrift für Ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde, (1975): 105, DOI. 6. Cf. Aro1963 who thinks (p. 476) that the Akk, Hbr, Aram and Ar terms look as if they were all based on a Sem »Nomen instrumenti aus einem unnachweisbaren NGL« (a n.instr. formed from a Sem NGL with an hitherto unattested meaning). »Jedenfalls dürfte das Wort alt sein« (In any case, it is likely an old term).

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► minǧalī, adj., sickle-shaped, falciform: nisba formation.

manǧalaẗ منْجلة , pl. manāǧilᵘ

√NǦL

n.f.

bench vice – WehrCowan1979

▪ A borrowing from modGrk, perh. a wanderwort with a modGrk < Tu < oGrk background.

▪ …

▪ No cognates (loanword).

▪ BadawiHinds1986 gives modGrk méngelē as the origin of the EgAr term. méngelē is probably a variant of μέγγενη ~ μέγκενη /méŋgeni/ ‘vice’, according to Wiktionary a loan from Tu méngene ‘press, vice, screw-jack, clamp’ which, according to Nişanyan_27Jan2018, is in its turn from modGrk μάγγανο(ν) /máŋgano(n)/ ~ μαγγάνι /maŋgáni/ ‘calender, machine to calender cloth or linen, mangle, press; winch, windlass’ < (Nişanyan) oGrk μάγγανον /máŋganon/, lit. ‘means for charming or bewitching others, philtre’, then also ‘mangonel’, i.e., a “magic” war machine, specific type of catapult or siege engine used to throw projectiles at a castle’s walls (cf. ↗manǧanīq ‘mangonel, ballista, catapult’), then also ‘block of a pulley’ (LiddellScott1940), probably so called after the pulleys used in the mangonel. Thus, if all the stages just mentioned are correct, we are dealing with a wanderwort that traveled across the Eastern Mediterranean: oGrk > modGrk > Tu > modGrk > Ar, but also into Eur langs (see section WEST, below).

▪ Engl mangonel, n., ‘military engine for hurling stones,’ mC13, from oFr mangonel ‘catapult, war engine for throwing stones, etc.’ (modFr mangonneau), diminutive of mLat mangonum, from vulgLat *manganum ‘machine,’ from Grk mánganon ‘any means of tricking or bewitching,’ said to be from a protIE *mang‑ ‘to embellish, dress, trim’ (source also of oPruss manga ‘whore,’ mIrish meng ‘craft, deception’), but Beekes thinks it might be Pre-Greek. Attested from c. 1200 in Anglo-Lat – EtymOnline.
▪ Engl mangle, machine for smoothing and pressing linen and cotton clothes after washing, 1774, from Du mangel (C18), apparently short for mangelstok, from stem of mangelen ‘to mangle’, from mDu mange, which probably is somehow from vulgLat *manganum ‘machine’ (see mangonel), ‘but its history has not been precisely traced’ [OED] – EtymOnline.

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