ID … • Sw – • BP – • APD … • © SG | 15Feb2021
√ŠRʔB
1 to stretch one’s neck in order to see (li‑ or ʔilà s.th.), crane one’s neck (li‑ or ʔilà for). – 2 to carry one’s head high (out of vanity); to leer (ʔilà at) – WehrCowan1979.
▪ In dictionaries of ClassAr often interpreted as a var. of form XI, ĭšrābba, of ↗šariba and therefore connected to the notion of ‘drinking’; cf., e.g., Lane iv (1872): ‘to raise one’s head like the camel that has satisffied his thirst on the occasion of drinking, stretch forth one’s neck to look, in preparing to drink water’. Lane thinks it is »not improbabl[e]« that the vb. derives from šariba.
▪ Freytag1830 would not exclude that it is a form IV of a 4-rad. root ŠRʔB (with id. meaning).
▪ Perhaps, however, ĭšraʔabba ~ ĭšrābba is neither from ŠRB nor from ŠRʔB, but (ultimately) from RBB, cf. Aram šarbēḇ, lHbr širbēḇ ‘to stretch out, prolong’.
▪ Klein1987 does not mention Ar ĭšraʔabba, but the postBiblHbr širbēḇ ‘1 to stretch out, prolong, enlarge; 2 to draw down, let down’ is conspicuously close in meaning. – Cognates of Hbr širbēḇ, as given by Klein1987: Aram šarbēḇ ‘to prolong, let hang down, let down’ and Akk šurbubu ‘to lower, make low, to humble’1
▪ According to Klein1987, postBiblHbr širbēḇ ‘1 to stretch out, prolong, enlarge; 2 to draw down, let down’1
is from a root ŠRBB ‘to stretch out, prolong, let hang down, let down’ that is borrowed from Aram šarbēḇ ‘to prolong, let hang down, let down’), a šap̄ʕēl (archaic Š-stem) of √RBB, »yet not in the sense ‘to grow, be great’, but in the meaning ‘to be low’, which occurs only in Akk šurbub ‘to lower, make low, to humble’«.2
Should Ar ĭšraʔabba ~ ĭšrābba be akin to these items rather than to šariba ‘to drink’? In this case, its closest relatives in Ar would be ↗rabb ‘lord, master’ and ↗rabā (√RBW) ‘to grow, increase’.
▪ The theme of ‘hanging down’ or ‘letting hang down’ (= [v2] of Š-RBB in Aram and lHbr, present also in Akk šurbubu) returns also in two other words that are usually derived from to šariba ‘to drink’, namely ↗šārib ‘moustache’ and šarrābaẗ ‘tassel’. Are these, literally, *‘the hanging ones’ rather than *‘the drinkers’?
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