Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ Akk (oBab) laptu A ‘turnip’, var. reading (stdBab) liptu B ‘(a vegetable)’ (CAD), postbibHbr lä̆p̄äṯ ‘turnip; vegetables eaten with bread’, Aram lip̄tā, Syr läp̄tā, lap̄tā, Ar lift ‘turnip’ (Klein1987). – Accord. Klein1987, the nHbr ləpātît ‘Hirschfeldia (a genus of plants)’ is formed from lpt ‘to twist’ (cf. ↗lafata); the author does not see it together with lä̆p̄äṯ ‘turnip’. – Cf. also the cognates of ↗lafata ? – Outside Sem: Copt (Sah) latp, (Boh) lapt, lebt ‘salt turnip, pickled turnip’.

▪ Youssef2003 suggested that the word is borrowed from Copt lapt, latp ‘salt turnip, pickled turnip’. However, cognates can be found already in Akk from oBab onwards. Zimmern1914: 57, and after him also Ullmann, WKAS, think that Ar lift is from Akk or Aram. nHbr has ləpātît for a similar plant, but Klein1987 does not relate this to ‘turnip’ but rather explains it as derived from lpt ‘to twist’.
▪ Could there be a relation between ‘turnip’ and ‘to twist, turn’ (↗lafata)? This would be an interesting parallel to Engl turnip that is thought by some to be composed of turn (»from its shape, as though turned on a lathe«, etymonline.com) and mEngl nepe ‘turnip’.
▪ The evidence of ClassAr dictionaries does not make things clearer. Some lexicographers seem to associate the word with Egypt (a fact that would support Youssef’s suggestion of a Copt provenience), for others it is simply sounds foreign, or “Nabataen”.¹
▪ Other meanings that the word could take in ClassAr are now obsolete and, with all likelihood, do not belong to ‘turnip’ but rather to ‘to turn aside’ (↗lafata). The value ^†‘half (of a thing, syn. šaqq), side (ṣiġw, ǧānib)’ seems to be derived from this notion, and the ^†‘cow, bull (syn. baqaraẗ)’ is probably literally the cattle *‘having crooked/twisted horn’. Still obscure remains the use of lift for ^†‘vulva of a lioness’ (because of its form?).

1. Cf. Lane vii 1885: »name now given in Egypt to the Brassica napus (of Linn., α edulis), the rape; also identified by some with ↗šalǧam (name given in Egypt to the Brassica napus β olifera); some dictionaries, among which also the Qāmūs, report that an authority shall have said, “I have not heard it from any person confided in for accuracy, and know not whether it be Ar or not”; Ibn al-Kubbī asserts it to be a Nabataean word.«

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