Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ ḤKR_1 ‘to wrong s.o., be obstinate, set apart and retain for o.s., hold back, hoard, monopolize’ ↗ḥakar (var. ḥukar)
▪ ḤKR_2 ‘ground rent, quitrent’ ↗ḥikr (var. ḥukr)
▪ ḤKR_3 ‘kitchen-garden, vegetable garden’ ↗ḥākūraẗ

Other values, now obsolete, include:

ḤKR_4 ‘drinking cup’: ^†ḥukr

conc

From among the three main values that the root ḤKR, according to DRS, displays in Sem, at least one (DRS #3 = ḤKR_4 ‘drinking cup’) is absent from MSA (though attested in ClassAr and still figuring in Hava1899). For the rest of the semantic spectrum, DRS distinguishes two main notions: (#1) ‘to wrong s.o.; to hold back; to insist, be obstinate, hold obstinately back for o.s., hoard, monopolize’, and (#2) ‘rent, to let’. If DRS is right, the latter is without representative in Ar. It is true that ḥākūraẗ ‘vegetable garden’ (ḤKR_3) cannot count as such an Ar representative since it is a borrowing from Syr. But what about ḥikr (~ ḥukr) ‘ground rent, quitrent’ (ḤKR_2)? The LevAr and EgAr evidence shows that it is probably indeed closer to ‘to set apart and monopolize’ than to ‘rent, to let out’. Given this closeness, should one distinguish #1 and #2 at all? The only reason to do so seems to be the idea, found, e.g., in Klein1987, that Hbr ḥāḵar ‘to hire, let’ may be akin to Sem ŚKR ‘dto.’ and thus have an origin that is different from the homonymous ḥāḵar ‘to wrong s.o. (etc.)’.

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▪ DRS 9 (2010)#ḤKR-1 Hbr *ḥākar (?), Ar ḥakara ‘agir injustement envers qn; retenir’, ḥakira ‘s’obstiner’, ḥukraẗ ‘accaparement’; Mhr ḥəkūr, Jib ḥkɔr ‘tenir à l’écart’, Mhr šəḥkūr, Jib s̃əḥékər ‘être excédé’ – Mhr ḥəkūr ‘être hésitant’, – Jib aḥtékér ‘tout vouloir pour soi’. -2 Hbr JP ḥākar, TargAram ḥəkar ‘louer’, EmpAram ḥkr ‘loyer’. -3 Ar ḥakr, ḥukr ‘coupe en bois’.

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▪ Fraenkel1886:189 thinks that the values ‘mieten (to hire)’ as well as ‘aufkaufen (to buy out)’ are borrowed, while »die echt arabische Bedeutung des Wortes (scheint) ‘ein wenig’ zu sein. Die ursprüngliche Bedeutung von حكر aber ist wohl ‘anhäufen’« (the genuinely Arabic meaning of the word seems to be ‘a little’. The original meaning of حكر, however, is probably ‘to pile up, hoard’).
▪ ḤKR_1: According to DRS, the inclusion of Hbr ḥākar among the cognates is doubtful. In Job 19:3, it is a hapax traditionally read tahkᵊrū (with h, not ḥ), which is often likened to Ar ^†hakara (HKR). A Ug ḥkr »est aussi un hapax, traduit par ‘abattre’ dans M. Dietrich & O. Loretz BI OR 23 (1966) 129 d’après l’Akk ḫakāru, voir sous ḪKR, mais serait plutôt lié à cette racine avec la valeur ‘détresse’ par De Moor & Margalit, voir TO II 39, n. 87, DUL 359.« – If we take away the Can items, we are left with Ar and the modSAr cognates.
▪ ḤKR_2: ḥikr ‘ground rent, quitrent’ may look as if it belonged to Hbr ḥākar ‘to hire, let’, etc. But DRS does not list any Ar item as cognate to the Hbr word. The authors rather consider a relation between the Hbr word and the Sem root KRY ‘louer; acheter’ (cf. Ar ↗kirāʔ ‘rent’). In contrast, Klein1987 thinks that Hbr ḥākar ‘to hire, let’ is probably related to the base ŚKR (Hbr śā̈ḵar ‘to hire, rent’, Phoen škr ‘to hire’, Ug škr ‘to let out on hire, let’¹ , Ar ↗šakara ‘to reward, thank’, Gz šekār ‘to hire’). – Therefore ḥikr ‘ground rent, quitrent’ is probably to be seen, as by ClassAr lexicographers, as dependent on ḤKR_1 in the specialized sense of ‘to set apart, hold back, monopolize’, cf. the meaning given for ClassAr in Lane as ‘what is enclosed of lands, or of lands and houses, or of lands and palm-trees etc., and debarred from others, so that they may not build upon it nor otherwise make use of it’ (cf. also EgAr ḥikr ‘land or property owned by the government and leased to a private tenant’ – BadawiHinds1986; cf. also EgAr LevAr ḥakkara ‘to prevent s.o. from building on a ground’– Hava1899).
▪ ḤKR_3 ḥākūraẗ ‘vegetable garden, kitchen-garden’: a borrowing from Syr with the original meaning of ‘piece of land retained and enclosed by its proprietor for sowing and planting trees’, belonging, ultimately, to the same (W?)Sem root *ḤKR ‘to set apart and retain (obstinately) for o.s.’ from which also the ḤKR_1 (and perhaps also the ḤKR_2) items are derived (without Syr mediation). The Syr cognate and the fact that ClassAr dictionaries identify the word as typical of the dialect of Syria support the assumption of a borrowing from Syr. – In contrast, Dolgopolsky2012#2571 does not assume a shift of meaning from an original *‘to set apart and hoard’ but reconstructs a CSem *ḤKR ‘field in cultivation’. The author puts this together not only with Sum agar (< Sem) ‘territoire irrigué’, but also with an IE *ag̑ro-s ‘field, field in cultivation’ (from which are oInd aǧra-ḥ ‘field, plain’, Grk agrós ‘field, farm’, Lat ager, Ge Acker, Engl acre ‘field’). According to Dolgopolsky, the Sem, IE (and Alt) forms go back to Nostr *XakER˅ ‘plain’ (in descendant langs: ‘field’).
▪ ḤKR_4: ḥukr ‘drinking cup; little of water’: still attested as such in Hava1899; without obvious relation to the other ḤKR items. Etymology obscure.

1. Tropper2008: < *śkr, ‘einen Mietling/Lohnarbeiter nehmen, dingen, mieten’, škr /šakīru / < *śakīru ‘Lohnarbeiter, Tagelöhner’.]

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