▪ Is Grk
sándalon ‘sandal(s)’ related to ‘sandal wood’ (↗¹
ṣandal)? Rolland thinks that the Grk ‘sandals’ orig. were a *‘wooden sole, firmly bound on by straps round the instep and ankle’ (LiddellScott1901) and that the word therefore is based on ‘
sandal wood’. But is that likely? Etymologists of Grk (Chantraine, Beekes) usually think that Grk
sándalon is from a non-Grk source, but they do not identify this source with a word meaning ‘sandal wood’. Accord. to Jastrow1904 (reprod. also by Nişanyan_23Mar2018), the Grk
sándalon is attested as early as
-C7, and in TargAram (
sandal) from
C1 onwards, both with the meaning ‘sole with straps, shoe’ and (
hence also) ‘flat fish like the sole or turbot’, and both are poss. from a common Pers source, specified by Jastrow as Pers
sandal and translated as ‘calceus’.
1
If the sole really was wooden, could there be an influence of Grk
sanís (Gen
-ídos) ‘board, plank, wooden scaffold, etc.’ (cf. also nGrk
sanidénios ‘wooden, plank‑…’)?
▪ A relation, likewise assumed by Rolland2014a, between Grk
sándalon ‘sandals’ and ↗³
ṣandal ‘(freight) barge, lighter; (EgAr) pontoon’/
†⁶
ṣandal ‘skiff, rowboat’ seems to be more likely than a dependence of ‘sandal(s)’ on ‘sandal wood’, as the small boat (and also the name of a flat fish) are easily conceivable as metaphorical use of ‘sandals’, as all are flat and open. « Le […] sens […] relève d’une dérivation métaphorique habituelle entre les noms de poissons, de chaussures et d’embarcations ; une datation des occurrences devrait permettre de vérifier quels rôles ont joués le grec et le turc dans le sémantisme de l’arabe. » – Cf., however, further discussion s.v. ↗³
ṣandal.
▪ …