▪ The value ‘skirt’ is not mentioned in
DRS but confirmed in several sources. If it is not from ¹
ḫaraṭa ‘to strip off’, it is likely a borrowing. Hoch1994 #353 mentions the item as possibly related to Eg *
ḫariṭa or *
ḫariṭ (?) ‘a garment?, bag\purse?’, a word with unclear meaning but apparently signifying s.th. that is »always [...] made of fine linen«. »Perhaps«, the author speculates, one has to compare »BiblHbr
ḥᵃrîṭîm, sometimes rendered ‘purses’, which occurs in a list of women’s garments (Isa. 3:22), but is used to wrap pieces of silver (Kings 5:23). The Hbr word is apparently related to Ar
ḫarīṭaẗ ‘bag’, modSyrAr
ḫarrāṭaẗ ‘skirt’. The Akk
ḫurdatu (a garment or cover), although dubious,
1
is another possibility. Černý (
Ety.Dict. 252) identified the word with
SCopt
šort ‘awning, veil’, but the connection is not certain.« – Given that the value ‘skirt’ of
ḫarrāṭaẗ seems to be a specifically Levantine phenomenon, an Akk etymology would look more likely than a Copt one. But the morpho-phonological structures of Ar
ḫarrāṭaẗ and Akk
ḫurdaẗ are quite different, so that also an Akk etymology would be problematic. Moreover, Hoch’s equation of
ḫarrāṭaẗ ‘skirt’ with
ḫarīṭaẗ ‘(leathern) bag, purse, receptable’ is doubtful, as the latter is a quasi-PP I, orig. prob. meaning *‘scraped off’, sc. referring to the leather, while the
Faʕʕālaẗ form of
ḫarrāṭaẗ rather has active connotations. And: if the meaning ‘skirt’ were simply a semantic development from ‘bag’ – a skirt seen as a ‘container’ – then why should Levantines not have taken
ḫarīṭaẗ itself?
▪ ...