Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ ḤFR_1 ‘to dig’ ↗ḥafara
▪ ḤFR_2 ‘hoof; ungular, ungulate’ ↗ḥāfir
▪ ḤFR_3 ‘original condition, beginning’ ↗ḥāfiraẗ
▪ ḤFR_4 ‘tartar of the teeth; (SyrAr) scurvy’ ↗ḥafr, ‘barren land, desolate area’ ↗EgAr ḥafraẗ gafraẗ.

♦ Semantic value spectrum in ClassAr (acc. to BAH2008): ‘1 hoof; 2 to dig, carve, engrave; hole in the ground, pit; 3 to expose; 4 to return to the original state, a former state; 5 to emaciate’

conc

▪ ḤFR_1 : from protSem *ḥpr ‘to dig’.
▪ ḤFR_2 : ‘Hoof’ is, prob. correctly, grouped in DRS together with ‘to dig’ (ḤFR_1). The item’s form (FāʕiL, PA I) makes it very likely that ‘hoof’ is originally the *‘digger, the digging one’, »as though it [the animal] dug the ground by reason of the vehemence of its tread upon it«, as already the ClassAr dictionaries assume (Lane ii 1865).
▪ ḤFR_3 : If Ar lexicographers are right, ḥāfiraẗ derives its meaning ‘original condition, beginning’ from ḤFR_2 ‘hoof’ and is thus ultimately dependent on ‘to dig’. The connection between ‘hoof’ and ‘original condition’ goes back to ancient merchant language: apparently, it refers to the situation immediately after a deal when the buyer of an animal is not allowed to take it with him as long as he has not paid its price; given that »horses were the most excellent and precious of the things that they [sc., the Arabs] possessed […] they used not to sell them on credit: a man used to say […] that its [the horse’s] hoof should not remove until he received its price« – Lane ii 1865.
▪ ḤFR_4 : The meanings ‘tartar of the teeth’ and (SyrAr) ‘scurvy’ have as their common denominator ‘rottenness, erosion’ and, hence, ‘emaciation’, a value still attested in ClassAr ^†ḥafara ‘to emaciate, render lean’, said of a young animal »rendering the mother flabby in flesh by much sucking« (Lane ii 1865) or in the EgAr expr. ḥafraẗ gafraẗ ‘barren and uninhabited land, desolate area’. All these values build on ḤFR_1 ‘to dig, make a hole’: teeth leave a hole when they fall out > rottenness; the young animal ‘digs’ into its mother when sucking intensely, rendering her weak > emaciation > barrenness.

hist

See individual entries.

cogn

▪ DRS #ḤPR-1 Akk ḫapāru, ḫepēru, Hbr *ḥāpar, Aram ḥᵊpar, Palm ḥpr, Ar ḥafara, Liḥ ḥafar, Sab Min ḥfr ‘creuser’, Qat ‘enterrer’, Mhr ḥəfūr, Ḥrs ḥəfōr, Jib ḥfɔr, Soq ḥfr ‘creuser’, Jib ḥfərɛ́t, Mhr məḥfərūt, Ḥrs məḥfərōt ‘trou, fosse’; Ar ḥāfir ‘sabot d’une bête’. -?¹ 2 Hbr ḥāpar ‘épier, espionner; rechercher, explorer’. ‑3 Akk ēpēru ‘nourrir, pourvoir’, ipr ‘subsistance, nourriture’, Ug ḥpr ‘ration’. ‑4 Mhr Ḥrs məḥfīr, Jib maḥfér ‘panier, plat en sparterie’. -5 Ar ḥāfiraẗ ‘début, état initial, caractère inné’.

1. Dilmann 1339 suggère un approchement avec des formes éthiopiennes de PḤR: Gz faḥara, fahara, Tña fäḥarä, Amh farä ‘creuser’ et -2 peuvent être liés. Gesenius souligne le parallélisme avec BQR; de même Palache 32; voir aussi Barth ES 25, WU 57.

disc

▪ Cf. above, section CONC, as well as individual entries.
▪ Badawi&AbdelHaleem2008 seem to regard ‘hoof’ as the primary value, but this is not supported by the overall Sem evidence.
▪ The presentation in DRS is not convincing. #ḤPR-2 ‘to research, explore’ is very likely to be fig. use of #ḤPR-1 (<*‘digging’ into a matter, a problem). For #ḤPR-5 cf. ḤFR_3 in section CONC above. (#ḤPR-3 and #ḤPR-4 seem to be irrelevant for Ar.)
▪ Ehret1995#744 posits an Ar ḥafr (vn.) with the meaning ‘to lie with’ and regards this as an extension in »diffusive« *‑r, derived from a bi-consonantal preprotSem √*ḤP ‘to put down’ < AfrAs *‑ḥaf‑ ‘to lay’.¹ However, ‘to lie with’ is hardly an independent value; rather, it is fig. use of ‘to dig’ (< *a man ‘digging’ into a woman), cf. above, section HIST.
▪ …

1. Other extensions from the same pre-protSem root would be: ↗ḤFʔ, ↗ḤFṢ, ↗ḤFḌ.

west

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deriv

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