▪ KWB_1 ‘goblet, cup’ ↗kūb ▪ KWB_2 ‘...’ ↗... ▪ KWB_3 ‘...’ ↗... ♦ Semantic value spectrum in ClassAr (acc. to BAH2008): ‘cup, goblet without a handle or spout, to drink from such a cup; to be large of head but slender of neck; dice; drums’
▪ It was originally suggested by some scholars that kūb is an early borrowing from Nab. Recently, however, it has been linked to Grk through a chain which includes Aram, Syr and Byzantine -- BAH2008
▪ Jeffery1938: »It occurs only in early Sūras in descriptions of the pleasures of Paradise, and was recognized by some of the early authorities as a Nabataean word (cf. al-Suyūṭī, Itq, 319; Mutaw, 60).1
Some, of course, endeavoured to derive it from kāb, but this verb is obviously denominative (TA, i, 464; LA, ii, 225). The word is commonly used in the early poetry, cf. ʕAdi b. Zaid, al-ʔAʕšà (Geyer, Zwei Gedichte, i, 56 = Dīwān, ii, 21), ʕAbda b. atl-Ṭabīb,2
etc., and seems to have been an early loan-word from Aram, as Horovitz, Paradies, 11, has noted, though Aram kwbʔ, Syr kūbā both seem to be from the ByzGrk koûpa (Lat cupa, cf. Fraenkel, Vocab, 25), from the older Grk kúmbē.3
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