ḥawar حَوَر , also pronounced ḥawr (Steingass1884: also ḥawwar)
ID … • Sw – • BP … • APD … • © SG | 15Feb2021
√ḤWR
white poplar. – For other meanings cf. ↗ḥawar and ↗ḥūr . – WehrCowan1979.
▪ No direct cognates. For the (most probable) wider context, see ↗ḥawar ‘(marked contrast between black and) white’ and, for the whole picture, ↗ḤWR_1.
▪ The value ‘(white) poplar’ is not mentioned in DRS at all. Lane mentions it in the lemma ḥawar (s.v. ḤWR), saying: »‘a certain kind of tree’ : the people of Syria apply the name of ḥawr to the ‘plane-tree’ (dulb); but it is ḥawar [… In one source] it is said to be »‘a certain kind of tree of which the gum is called kahrabāʔ ’; by the modern Egyptians (pronounced ḥawr) applied to the ‘white poplar’ [= the value now lexicalized in WehrCowan1979]; ‘a certain kind of wood called al-bayḍāʔ [the white one] because of its whiteness’.«
▪ Since there are no direct cognates, and given the oscillation in pronunction between ḥawar and ḥawr, a definitive statement about the etymology of the term can not be made. If it depends on ‘(marked contrast between black and) white’, one will have to conform ↗ḥawar. For the whole picture, see ↗ḤWR.
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