Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ ʕǦM_1 ‘stone, kernel, pit, pip, seed (of fruit)’ ↗¹ʕaǧam; ‘to try, test, put to the test’ ↗ʕaǧama
▪ ʕǦM_2 ‘to provide (a letter) with a diacriticaI point (with diacritical points)’ ↗ʔaʕǧama; ‘dotted, provided with diacritical points; dictionary, lexicon’ ↗²muʕǧam
▪ ʕǦM_3 ‘dumb, speechless; speaking incorrect Arabic, barbarian, non-Arab, foreigner, alien; Persian’ ↗ʔaʕǧamᵘ; ‘(dumb) beast’ ↗ʕaǧmāʔᵘ; ‘barbarians, non-Arabs; Persians’ ↗²ʕaǧam

Other values, now obsolete, include (Lane, Hava1899):

▪ ^†ʕǦM_4 ‘young camels (up to a certain age)’: ^†ʕaǧm; cf. also ^†ʕaǧam ‘camels that bite, or chew, the [trees called] ʕiḍāh and the tragacanths and [other] thorny trees, and satisfy themselves therewith so as to be in no need of [plants called] ḥamḍ’
▪ ^†ʕǦM_5 ‘hard rocks protruding (lit. growing forth) in a valley’: ^†ʕaǧamāt (sg. ^†ʕaǧmaẗ, ʕaǧamaẗ); cf. also ^†ʕaǧmaẗ ~^†ʕiǧmaẗ ‘such as is accumulated, or congested, of sand, or abundance thereof, sand rising above what is around it, or the last portion of sand’, (Hava1899) ^†ʕaǧmāʔᵘ (pl. ʕaǧmāwāt) ‘tract of sand without trees’
▪ ^†ʕǦM_6 ‘root\base of the tail’: ^†ʕaǧm
▪ ^†ʕǦM_7 ‘large bat, or swallow’: ^†ʕaǧǧām
▪ ^†ʕǦM_8 ‘locked’ (door): ^†muʕǧam
▪ ^†ʕǦM_ ‘…’: ^†…

♦ Semantic value spectrum in ClassAr (acc. to BAH2008): ‘fruit stones (particularly those of dates), seed, solid; to test by biting on; to be dumb; beast; those who cannot speak Arabic, obscurity’

conc

▪ [gen] : The semantic variety within the “root” can probably be reduced to two basic meanings, namely those reflected in the MSA values [v1] and [v3]. While [v1] seems to be “purely” Ar, [v3] may have cognates in Sem.
▪ [v1] : The original meaning of the vb. ʕaǧama is *‘to bite on s.th. hard (a stone, kernel, etc.) to test its quality’, hence the more general ‘to put to the test’. The vb. could be denom. from ¹ʕaǧam ‘stone, kernel, pit, pip, seed (of fruit)’, which in turn shows some resemblance with [v2] and ^†[v5] in that all of them share the idea of *‘s.th. protruding, making it discernible from the surrounding’. Perh. even ^†[v4] ‘camels biting\chewing (certain types of thorny trees)’ belongs to this complex.
▪ [v2] : ʔaʕǧama ‘to provide (a letter) with diacritical points’ seems to be denom. from the same ¹ʕaǧam ‘stone, kernel, pit, pip, seed (of fruit)’ on which also [v1] ‘to put to the test’ is based. The original meaning thus is *‘to provide (s.th., e.g., letters) with little “stones” or other “protruding” elements to make it discernable from others, or from the surrounding’.
▪ [v3] : Within this value, the semantic shift from ‘dumb, speechless’ to ‘speaking incorrect Arabic’, hence ‘barbarian, non-Arab, foreigner, alien’ and esp. ‘Persian’ is easy to explain as it parallels the development known from Grk bárbaroi (orig. *‘babbling’, hence ‘non-Greek > barbaric’). The original ‘dumbness, muteness’ is best preserved in the adj. ʔaʕǧamᵘ. – The value seems to have cognates in Sem but displays a “life of its own” in Ar: Akk agāmu means ‘to be angry, grieved, vexed’, and similar notions dominate also in Ug and Hbr (see below, section COGN). In contrast, the modSAr languages not only come close to Ar (Mhr Jib Ḥrs Soq ‘mute’) but also show the notion of *‘narrow pass\passageway’ (hence also ‘virgin’) and *‘to block, dam’ (Jib Soq), which may point to an underlying primary value from which also the Ar ‘dumbness, speechlessness’ possibly has developed. Cf. in this context also the old ^†[v8] ^†muʕǧam ‘locked’ (door), a value that one would find hard to relate to the *‘(diacritical) dotting, making distinguishable’ of [v2] ʔaʕǧama. – See also below, section DISC.
▪ ^†[v4] : The old ^†ʕaǧ(a)m for ‘camels that bite\chew (certain types of) thorny trees’ belongs most probably to [v1] *‘to bite on s.th. hard (to test it)’, but there may be interference from [v3] ‘dumbness’, cf. e.g., ↗ʕaǧmāʔᵘ ‘(dumb) beast’.
▪ ^†[v5] : Are the ‘hard rocks protruding (lit. growing forth) in a valley’ a feature in the landscape that make them prominent and, thus, *‘distinguishable, discernable’? If so, the value may belong to [v1]. The old n.f. ^†ʕaǧmaẗ ~^†ʕiǧmaẗ ‘sand rising above what is around it’ could point in the same direction.
▪ ^†ʕǦM_6 : Can ^†ʕaǧm ‘root\base of the tail’ be special use of ^†[v5] *‘s.th. protruding’?
▪ ^†ʕǦM_7 : The FaʕʕāL pattern of ^†ʕaǧǧām seems to say that a ‘large bat, or swallow’ does s.th. intensely, or possesses a certain quality as a characteristic trait. Given the semantic options within the root, it seems plausible to interpret ^†ʕaǧǧām as *‘the (very) mute one, the mute “bird”’.
▪ ^†[v8] : In the now obsol. PP IV ^†muʕǧam ‘locked’ (door), the Ar language has perh. preserved the original value on which the complex around [v3] ‘dumbness’ may be based, cf. the cognates in modSAr.
▪ …

hist

▪ …

cogn

▪ Klein1987, CAD, DohaDict: Akk agāmu ‘to be angry (CAD), grieved, vexed’, Ug ʕgm ‘to groan, moan’, Hbr ʕāgam ‘to be grieved, sad, gloomy, depressed’ (Hapax in Bible), mHbr (Ni) näʕ^ägam ‘to be grieved, sad, sorry’, postBiblHbr ʕāgmāʰ, mHbr ʕᵒgäm, nHbr ʕᵘgäm ‘grief, sadness, sorrow’, BabAram ʕgm ‘to be sad’, Syr ʕăgam ‘to be grieved’. – Mhr ʔāgēm, ʔāgəmēt / ʔāgwōm, ʔāgəmōtən ‘mute; narrow passageway’, ʔāgəm, ʔāgēm ‘virgin’, ʔaygəm ‘to be mute’, Jib ʕégəm ‘to be mute’, igɛ́m ‘narrow pass’, ʕógúm ‘to block, dam’, Ḥrs ʔāgem ‘virgin’, ʔāgōm / ʔawéggém, ʔāgemōten ‘quick snake’, ʔáygem ‘to be mute’, ʕéyemi ‘Persian’, Soq ʕaygémhen ‘mute’, égom ‘to block, be mute’
▪ …

disc

▪ [v3]: Given the semantic distance between Akk Ug Hbr Syr ‘to be angry, grieved, sad’ and Ar modSAr ‘to be locked, be mute, dumb’ it may be indicated to keep the two apart. – Should one instead assume a relation between the Ar modSAr values and the phonologically close root protSem *ʕlg ‘to stammer’ (SED I #V₂, with Ug ʕlg ‘tartamudear’, tʕlgt ‘stammering’, Hbr ʕillēg ‘stammerer’, Mnd alg ‘to be dumb, have impaired or stammering speech’, alga ‘dumb, tongue-tied, stammered’, Te täʕalaǧäǧä ‘to stammer’)? In this case, Ar ʕǦM_3 could be imagined to be a variant of Ar ʕalǧ ‘tout barbare; non arabe, qui ne pas musulman; rustique dans ses manières’ (with parallels in EthSem, ibid.).
▪ …

west

▪ [v3]: (orig. Span) Aljamía or Aljamiado (composed of aljamía +‎ PP-suffix -ado) »manuscripts that use the Arabic script for transcribing European languages, especially Romance languages such as Old Spanish or Aragonese« (wiki.en), from Arabic (al‑)ʕaǧamiyyaẗ, from ʕaǧam ‘non-Arabs, esp. Persians’ + nsb-suffix ‑ī + -aẗ (fem. marker, also used to mark language names or to generally form nouns from the adjectives) – en.wiktionary.
▪ …

deriv

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