conc▪ Any connection to other items of √ḤṢN (‘fortress, to be inaccessible’; ‘chastity, unblemished reputation’; ‘fox’)? – Lane ii 1865 reports the Ar lexicographers’ explanation which links ḥiṣān to ↗ḥiṣn ‘fortress’: »the ḥiṣān is so called because he preserves his rider [TA] or because his back is like the ḥiṣn to its rider [Mgh, Mṣb]«. – Most probably, however, ḥiṣān is not from ḥiṣn, but both are from the same basic notion of ʻstrength’ (↗ḥaṣuna), so that the word for ‘horse’ originally meant *ʻthe strong one’. – In any case, ḥiṣān seems to be a secondary development, peculiar to Ar (and modSAr?), while the more widespread (though still not deeply rooted) word for ‘horse’ in Sem is (WSem) *paraš‑, see Ar ↗faras; for a word of possibly foreign (IE) origin, cf. (EgAr) ↗sīsī.
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