1 nervousness, nervosity; – C2a (pl. ‑āt) zealous partisanship, bigotry, fanaticism; b party spirit, team spirit, esprit de corps; c tribal solidarity, racialism, clannishness, tribalism, national consciousness, nationalism – WehrCowan1976.
▪ [v1] : modern neologism, from ↗ʕaṣab ʻnerves’ – cf. Monteil1960: 123. ▪ [v2]: From ↗ʕaṣaba ʻto wind, fold, tie, wrap, bind up, bandage; (in ClassAr also:) to gather round s.th.; to clasp, grasp, hold tight’.1
– »ʻʕaṣabiyyaẗ’ referred in Arab antiquity to kinship solidarity. The verb ʕaṣaba means ʻto bind, fold, or wind,’ and the noun ʕaṣabaẗ denotes the blood relations in the male line. Various translations and interpretations of ʕaṣabiyyaẗ have been suggested by modern scholars, ranging from ʻgroup feeling,’ ʻesprit de corps,’ ʻcohesiveness,’ or ʻsolidarity’ to ʻidea of nationhood,’ but all of them refer to the later complex reading attributed to it by the philosopher Ibn Ḫaldūn (d. 808/1406)«.2
– »Already used in the ḥadīṯ in which the Prophet condemns ʕaṣabiyyaẗ as contrary to the spirit of Islam, the term became famous as a result of the use to which it was put by Ibn Ḫaldūn, who made this concept the basis of his interpretation of history and his doctrine of the state. ʕAṣabiyyaẗ is, for Ibn Ḫaldūn, the fundamental bond of human society and the basic motive force of history […]. The first basis of the concept is undoubtedly of a natural character, in the sense that ʕaṣabiyyaẗ in its most normal form is derived from tribal consanguinity (nasab, ĭltiḥām), but the inconvenience of this racial conception was already overcome in Arab antiquity itself by the institution of affiliation (walāʔ), to which Ibn Ḫaldūn accords great importance in the formation of an effective ʕaṣabiyyaẗ. Whether it is based on blood ties or on some other social grouping, it is for Ibn Ḫaldūn the force which impels groups of human beings to assert themselves, to struggle for primacy, to establish hegemonies, dynasties and empires […]«.3 ▪ …
For other values attached to the root, cf. ↗ʕaṣaba, ↗ʕaṣab, ↗ʕaṣabī, ↗ʕaṣīb, ↗ʕiṣābaẗ, ↗taʕaṣṣub, ↗ĭʕtiṣāb, as well as, for the general picture, ↗√ʕṢB.