▪ The Sem evidence does not suggest more than one basic value. But Badawi 2008 gives three values of √ḎBḤ in ClassAr: ‘1. flood channels; 2. a disease in the throat; 3. to cut the throat, to slay, a butchered animal, to sacrifice, an animal fit or prepared for slaughter or sacrifice’.
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DRS 4 (1993)#ḎBḤ treats ‘disease in the throat, angina’ as belonging to ‘to cut the throat, sacrifice’ (cf. Lane: ‘a disease, or pain, in the throat which sometimes kills, blood which chokes and kills, an ulcer that comes forth in the throat or fauces of a man […], an ulcer that appears in that part, obstructing it, and stopping the breath, and killing’). No mention of ‘flood channels’ (but Lane has, as one value of
maḏbaḥ, also ‘a trench in the earth, […] such as is made by a torrent, the channel of a torrent […]’).
▪ Apart from the values mentioned so far, Lane has also the items
ḏubaḥ ‘a certain plant which ostriches eat’, and
ḏibaḥ ‘a species of […] truffle, of a white colour’.
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▪ The earliest meaning may have been ‘to cut lengthwise, split’, then transferred to trenches/channels made in the earth by torrents etc., and also specialised as ‘to cut the throat’, hence also ‘disease in the throat’.