disc▪ Fraenkel1886 is not clear (or even contradicts himself?): on the one hand (p. 229), he says that marasaẗ ‘rope’ probably is genuinely Ar (only the later vulgar variant †maraš being borrowed from Syr); on the other hand (p. 93), he states that only the vb. ↗marasa is Ar while marasaẗ ‘rope’ is a loan from Syr (the variant form †marš being a late Aramaeism that replaced the fuṣḥà word in Syria and Iraq). Fraenkel rejects a relation between ‘rope’ and ‘to twist’ which, accord. to him, is another meaning of Ar mrs and the etymon of ↗mārasa, vb. III, ‘to fight’.
▪ Lane’s (vii 1885) comment that the rope is »so called because of the strong twisting and adhering (tamarrus) of its strands, one upon another« connects marasaẗ to the vb. I ↗marasa †‘to mash, press, knead’ and to the vb. V tamarrasa ‘to exercise (an office), etc.’, treated under ↗marāsaẗ ‘strength, power, vigour’.
▪ Brockelmann1895 notes that Syr maršā ‘rope’, accord. to Jensen, is from an Akk maḫrašu. But this is not verifiable in CAD, which only has markasu ‘rope, cable of a boat’ (among other values).
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