Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ ŠʕR_1 ‘hair’ ↗šaʕr
▪ ŠʕR_2 ‘to feel, know intuitively; (compose) poetry’ ↗šiʕr
▪ ŠʕR_3 ‘scrub country’ ↗šaʕrà
▪ ŠʕR_4 ‘Sirius, Dog Star’ ↗al-šiʕrà
▪ ŠʕR_5 ‘password, slogan, motto’ ↗šiʕār
▪ ŠʕR_6 ‘barley’ ↗šaʕīr
▪ ŠʕR_7 ‘rite, cultic practice’ ↗šaʕīraẗ
▪ ŠʕR_8 ‘goats’ ↗šaʕārà
▪ ŠʕR_9 ‘male dancer in female roles’ ↗šaʕʕār
▪ ŠʕR_10 ‘attacks, diatribes’ (pl) ↗šawāʕirᵘ
▪ ŠʕR_11 ‘split; mad, crazy’ ↗mašʕūr

♦ Semantic value spectrum in ClassAr (acc. to BAH2008): ‘to know, to be cognisant of, to perceive by means of any of the senses; poetry, to write poetry; hair, wool, fur, to be covered in hair; innermost garment; sign, rites’. – al-šiʕrà is said to be a corrupted borrowing from Grk.

▪ The main items in this root are ŠʕR_1 ‘hair’ and ŠʕR_2 ‘to perceive; to feel, know intuitively’.
▪ Does the latter depend on the former?
▪ Many of the other values derive probably from ŠʕR_1 and ŠʕR_2, but ŠʕR_4 ‘Sirius, Dog Star’ may be from Grk.
▪ ŠʕR_1 : (Kogan2015 Sw#36:) from protSem *śaʕr‑ ‘hair’ (SED I #260). Passim except modEthSem and modSAr.
▪ ŠʕR_2 …
▪ ŠʕR_3 …
▪ ŠʕR_4 …
▪ ŠʕR_5 …
▪ ŠʕR_6 …
▪ ŠʕR_7 …
▪ ŠʕR_8 …
▪ ŠʕR_9 …
▪ ŠʕR_10 …
▪ ŠʕR_11 …

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▪ BDB1906 #ŚʕR–1 Akk šārtu ‘hairskin’, Hbr śēʕār ‘hair’, Aram seʕrā, Syr saʕrā, sʕartā, Ar šaʕ(a)r ‘hair’, šaʕira ‘to be hairy’, Gz śəʕərt ‘hair’; Hbr (denom.) śāʕar ‘to bristle (with horror)’, śāʕîr ‘he-goat, buck’, śāʕîr ‘satyr, demon (with he-goat’s form, or feet)’, śəʕōrāh ‘barley’, śəʕōrîm ‘priests [the bearded ones?]’ ¹ ; perhaps also n.pr. Śēʕîr (designating either the land of Edom, a specif. mountain, or the Edomites), seen by some together with Hbr śāʕîr ‘goat’, others compare ClassAr ^†al-ʔašʕar ‘the hairy’, i.e. “well-wooded”, cf. ^†šaʕār ‘trees’. – –2 Hbr *śāʕar perh. ‘to be acquainted with’, Ar šaʕara ‘to perceive’, Aram Syr sʕar ‘to visit, inspect’

1. It is not clear why BDB groups the ‘priests’ together with ‘hair’, not with ‘to perceive, have insight’, cf. Ar šāʕir.

▪ From ŠʕR_1 ‘hair’ seem to be derived many of the other values: ŠʕR_3 ‘scrub country’ seems to be the *‘country with the hairy bushes’ (ClassAr has also ^†šaʕrān with the same meaning). ŠʕR_6 ‘barley’ is obviously *‘bearded grain’ (but the word is old, having PSem, perhaps even AfrAs ancestors, see s.v.). ŠʕR_8 ‘goats’ is probably properly *‘the hairy animal’ (cf. ClassAr ^†šaʕiraẗ ‘[sheep or goat] having hair growing between the two halves of its hoof, which in consequence bleed’ – Lane iv 1872).
▪ Also ŠʕR_2 ‘to perceive, know (in minute detail), to feel, know intuitively’ may originally be *‘to have knowledge about, or be sensitive for, things so thin/fine as a hair’, and from this is the value ‘(to compose) poetry’, a poet being endowed with deeper insight, a special sensibility for the nuances of life, as fine as a hair.
▪ ŠʕR_4 ‘Sirius, Dog Star’ is perhaps of Grk origin (see s.v.), but it may also be another derivation from ŠʕR_2 ‘to feel, know intuitively’ or directly from ŠʕR_1 ‘hair’.
▪ ŠʕR_5 ‘password, slogan, motto’ is originally *‘sign by means of which one can know, or make known, s.th. or s.o., marker’, i.e., it is derived from ŠʕR_2 ‘to (get to) know’. The same holds for ŠʕR_7 ‘rite, cultic practice’, which seems to be *‘(practice of things that can be accepted as) signs/markers of obedience to God/a deity)’.
▪ ŠʕR_9 ‘male dancer in female roles’, ŠʕR_10 ‘attacks, diatribes’ (pl), and ŠʕR_11 ‘split; mad, crazy’ are more difficult to connect to any fo the values mentioned so far and must, for the moment, remain unexplained.

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