▪ From a (W?)Sem *ḤKR ‘to be obstinate; to hold back (for o.s.), hoard, monopolize; to wrong s.o., ill-treat o.’s people’.
▪ Hava1899 gives the meaning of ḥakar as ‘monopolised corn, goods’. – Cf. also other related items, now obsolete, given in the same dictionary: †ḥakarai (ḥakr), vb. I, ‘to wrong s.o., ill-treat o.’s people’; †ḥakiraa (ḥakar) ‘to be obstinate, contentious; to monopolise (bi- goods)’; †ḥakr ‘wrongful behaviour’; †ḥakir ‘withholder of corn’; †ḥākara, vb. III, ‘to contend with s.o.’; †taḥakkara, vb. V, ‘to monopolise s.th. till it becomes scarce’.
▪ Accord. to DRS, the Hbr form given as a cognate here is doubtful. ▪ It seems difficult to decide which of the basic notions appearing in this items is the primary meaning: ‘to be obstinate’, ‘to wrong s.o., ill-treat’, or ‘to hold back (for o.s.), hoard’? One option could be: ‘to be obstinate’ > ‘to hold (obstinately) back (for o.s.), hoard’ > ‘to wrong s.o., ill-treat (by hoarding s.th. for o.s.)’. Another option could be to imagine a development of two senses (‘to be obstinate’ and ‘to wrong s.o.’) from one primary ‘to hold back’. ▪ Akin to DRS ḤKR#2 ‘rent, to let out’ (Hbr JP ḥākar, TargAram ḥəkar ‘to let’, EmpAram ḥkr ‘rent’)? The authors of DRS hold this item apart from ḤKR#1 because it may be related to Sem KRY ‘to let; to buy’ (cf. Ar ↗kirāʔ ‘rent’).1
At first sight, Ar ↗ḥikr ‘ground rent, quitrent’, seems to be cognate of the DRS ḤKR#2 items on account of semantic proximity to ‘rent, to let’. However, as already seen by ClassAr lexicographers, ḥikr is more likely to depend on ḤKR_1 (in the sense of ‘to hold back for o.s., monopolize’), cf. the meaning given for ClassAr in Lane as ‘what is enclosed of lands, or of lands and houses, or of lands and palm-trees etc., and debarred from others, so that they may not build upon it nor otherwise make use of it’.2
Nevertheless, the overlapping between ‘to hold back’ and ‘to let’ may suggest to reconsider DRS’ decision to hold the two values/items apart.
►ĭḥtakara, vb. VIII, 1 to buy up, hoard and withhold, corner (a commodity); 2 to monopolize (a commercial article); to bare exclusive possession (of s.th.), hold a monopoly (over s.th.): t-stem (autobenef.) of obsol. †ḥakira (see above, section HIST). ►ḥukraẗ, n.f., 1 hoarding (of goods), (Hava1899: withholding of corn); 2 monopoly: n.un. (?). ►BP#4997ĭḥtikār, pl. -āt, n., 1 cornering, buying up, hoarding; 2 monopoly; 3 preferential position; supremacy, hegemony: vn. VIII | ~ tiǧāraẗ al-bunn, n., coffee-trade monopoly; ~ al-sukkar, n., sugar monopoly. ►ĭḥtikārī, adj., rapacious, grasping, greedy: nsb-adj., from vn. VIII (preceding item). For other items of the root, cf. ↗ḤKR, ↗ḥikr, ↗ḥākūraẗ.