ID … • Sw – • BP – • APD … • © SG | 15Feb2021
√KNF
water closet, toilet; public lavatory – WehrCowan1979.
DRS lists the word as a value distinct from ‘wing; to shelter, protect’ and ‘to surround, encircle’. But why shouldn’t the ‘toilet’ just be the *‘fenced, protected place’? The quasi-PP form fits very well in such an etymology, and the original values are attested in ClassAr.
▪ ‘toilet’ (KNF_3) is originally *‘the sheltered place’, a specialised meaning of a quasi-PP from vb. I. In ClassAr, the original meaning is still attested: Ullmann WKAS gives ‘surrounding, covering, protecting (of a shield)’ and ‘enclosure, pen, fold, paddock, barricade (of shrubbery)’, before he mentions ‘lavatory, closet, latrine, privy’.
▪ The value ‘graveyard’ that the f. kanīfaẗ takes in ChadAr is clearly a specialisation of *‘enclosure, fenced, protected place’.
▪ DRS 10 (2012)#KNP-3 mentions only a MġrAr form knīf ‘lieux d’aisance, latrines’ and, with an interrogation mark, ChadAr kanīfa ‘cimetière’.
▪ But kanīf is both ClassAr and MSA and belongs most probably to the complex treated under ↗kanaf ‘wing’. For related items see therefore there.
▪ The MġrAr and ChadAr items listed in DRS as well as the MSA value can easily be derived from the value ‘to surround, fence, protect’ so that the item should rather be grouped with ↗kanaf ‘wing’ from which ‘to surround, fence, protect’ etc. are derived.
http://www2.hf.uio.no/common/apps/permlink/permlink.php?app=polyglotta&context=ctext&uid=da43d756-06ff-11ee-937a-005056a97067