▪
ǧadal is the vn. I of the (now obsolete) vb. I,
†ǧadila (
a,
ǧadal), vb. I, ‘to be quarrelsome, contentious’. In ClassAr, the vb. I (and esp. also vb.s II and III) could still refer to physical fighting, combat, cf., e.g.
†ǧaddala ‘to
knock s.o. down’,
ǧādala ‘to fight s.o.’). However, the most widespread use is as *‘fighting each other
with words’. This is also the only sense with which
ǧadal and related lexemes appear in the Qur’ān.
▪ Metaphorical use is based on an original *‘twisting tight, braiding, plaiting’ (↗
ǧadala) which has developed a wide spectrum of semantic extensions, building, on the one hand, on figurative use of *‘twisting’ (> ‘getting into each other = quarreling, wrangling, fighting, disputing’; > ‘shapely, nicely “knitted”, well-formed, handsome’; > ‘way, mode; habit, nature, determination of mind [i.e., the way a person is “knitted, made up”]; > ‘rivulet, i.e., intertwining trickles of water’, > ‘table, chart, intersection of lines’, etc.) and, on the other hand, on *‘firmness, solidity, strength’ (> ‘maturity, ripeness’, > ‘growth, largeness, bigness’, > ‘stronghold, fortification’) – for an overview, see “root” entry ↗√ǦDL.
▪ The range of meanings of
ǧadal in ClassAr is summarized by Lane ii 1865 as: ‘vehemence, violence, in altercation or disputation or litigation, sharpness, acrimony in dispute; ability\power to practise it; (also
ǧadl, pl.
ǧudūl,
ʔaǧdāl) well-made syllogism’;
1
(
ʕilm al-)
ǧadal ‘polemics’;
ǧadalī ‘querelleur, disputeur’.
▪ The value ‘
intellectual argument, dispute’, which is so prominent in Ar, is only very scarcely attested outside Ar (only in EthSem, where it came to mean ‘to kill’).
▪ …