Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ RǦM_1 ‘to curse; to stone; heap of stones’ ↗raǧama
▪ RǦM_2 ‘dragoman, to interpret’ ↗turǧumān (and ↗raǧama)
▪ RǦM_3 ‘shooting stars, meteorites’ ↗ruǧum (and ↗raǧama)
▪ RǦM_4 ‘diet’ ↗riǧīm

Other values, now obsolete, include:

RǦM_5 ‘cross-beams of a pulley’ : ^†riǧāmān (du. – Hava1899)
RǦM_6 ‘strong; battering (horse); sling’ : ^†mirǧam (Hava1899)

▪ Semantic value spectrum in ClassAr (acc. to BAH2008): ‘1 stones, to stone, kill by stoning, heap up stones (on a grave), heap abuse (on); 2 to curse, drive out, expel; 3 to doubt, conjecture; 4 boycotting; 5 shooting stars; 6 to gauge the level of water in a well’

conc

▪ The situation within the Sem root RGM is summarized by Kogan2015:218#28 as follows: »Hbr rgm, Syr rgm, Ar rǧm < protCSem *RGM ‘to stone’. ⇒ [This meaning] represents an extension of the more original [Sem] ‘to speak (emphatically), to curse’,¹ represented by Akk ragāmu ‘to call; to prophesy; to summon; to lodge a claim, sue’, Ug rgm ‘to say, tell, announce’, Ar rǧm ‘to revile, utter evil speech’, (III) ‘to plead in defense of someone’, Gz ragama ‘to curse, insult’, Jib s̃érégəm ‘to blame one another with harsh words’. Within this approach, Soq rígɛm ‘être lapidé’ can be plausibly explained as an Arabism. / The diachronic background of *rgm in modSAr remains problematic. Throughout modSAr, the basic meaning of this root is ‘to cover, protect’: Mhr rəgūm ‘to cover (usually food to keep the flies off it)’, Jib ɛrgúm ‘to cover, put a lid on’, Soq régom ‘couvrir, protéger’. As such, this meaning can hardly have anything to do with stoning, and it seems wise, therefore, to keep apart Soq rígɛm ‘to be stoned’ and régom ‘to cover, protect’ as different (homonymous) roots […]. At the same time, it is noteworthy that one of the prominent applications of rgm in Jib is connected with covering a dead body with stones: erógəm ‘to cover (a dead body, with stones and soil)’, rɔ́tgəm ‘(corpse) to be buried’, s̃ergím ‘to be covered, buried alive (as, e.g., a witch)’, rəgmún ‘stoned, covered by stones; covered by stones and soil (in the grave)’. The same semantic nuance is attested in Ar: raǧam ‘stones that are placed upon a grave’, rǧm (II) ‘to place a stone on one’s grave’. These facts may prompt one to abandon the traditional semantic explanation […], disconnecting the meaning ‘to stone’ from ‘to blame, curse’ and deriving it instead from ‘to cover (with stones).’² It is more likely, however, that the meaning ‘to cover with stones’ in Ar represents a secondary development from ‘to stone (as punishment)’, which, in its turn, influenced Jib rgm ‘to cover’, originally unconnected to the present root.«
▪ RǦM_1-3 seem to be etymologically related. As suggest by Leslau and substantiated by Kogan2015, the development within the Sem root seems to have been: Sem *RGM ‘to speak, say, shout’ > ‘to speak against, bring legal action against’ > ‘to abuse, curse’ > ‘to cast stones [while cursing]’ > ‘stone, tombstone; meteorites’; for ‘to interpret ’ see DISC below). – Cf., however, the fact that »[t]he lapidation and heaps of stones [as part of the ḥaǧǧ rituals] at Minā are called ǧamraẗ [↗√ǦMR, not √RǦM, i.e., with metathesis], [… traditionally derived from ǧamarāt al-ʕArab ‘groups of Bedouin tribes’, allegedly close to Ar ↗ǧamma and ↗ǧamaʕa ‘to reunite’]« – art. »radjm« (M. Gaudefroy-Demombynes / T. Fahd), in EI².
▪ In contrast, RǦM_4 is a borrowing from Fr régime ‘diet’.
▪ Value RǦM_5 ‘the two cross-beams of a pulley’, attested in ClassAr ^†riǧāmān, seems to be an extension of ^†riǧām ‘stone for cleansing a well; stone-work around a well’ (Hava1899), which clearly belongs to the ‘heap of stones’ of RǦM_1.
▪ Value RǦM_6 ‘strong; battering (horse); sling’, attested in ClassAr ^†mirǧam (Hava1899), has with all probability to be seen in connection with the ‘cursing’ and ‘casting (of stones)’ that is among the main ideas of RǦM_1.

1. As already argued by Leslau, CompDictGz 465: »In view of the various meanings within Sem, the development seems to be: ‘to speak, say’ > ‘to speak against, bring legal action against’ > ‘to abuse, curse’ > ‘to cast stones’.« 2. »As actually done in HALOT 1187: “The basic meaning develops from ‘to heap up stones’ > ‘to stone’ > ‘to curse’ > ‘to make a statement’” (cf. already Nöldeke 1910:47: “Im Geez hat die Grundbedeutung ‘steinigen’ durchaus die übertragene Bedeutung ‘verfluchen’ angenommen… Das Verbum ist ein Denominativ von einem Worte, das ‘Stein’ bedeutet”). This reconstruction, presupposing a diametrical reversal of Leslau’s semantic hypothesis mentioned above, appears highly improbable, especially in its latter step (‘to curse’ > ‘to make a statement’).« – Kogan2015:218, n. 655.

hist

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cogn

▪ RǦM_1 : CAD, Zammit2002, Tropper2008, Kogan2015: Akk ragāmu ‘to call, call out; to prophesy; to summon, convoke; to lodge a claim, sue, bring a legal complaint, claim s.th. by lawsuit’, rigmu ‘voice, sound; noise; call, proclamation; thunder; wailing, lamentation; complaint, request, legal complaint’ (from oAkk on), Ug rgm ‘to say, tell, announce, report, talk’, Ar raǧama ‘to revile, utter evil speech; (L-stem) to plead in defense of someone’, Gz ragama, Gur räggämä, (as)suraggämä, Amh täräggʷämä, räggämä ‘to curse, insult, revile’, Jib s̃érégəm ‘to blame one another with harsh words’. – Hbr rāgam ‘to stone, kill by stoning’, Aram Syr rᵉgam, Ar raǧama ‘to stone’, (? Ar > ) Soq rígɛm ‘to be stoned’. – ? Mhr rəgūm ‘to cover (usually food to keep the flies off it)’, Jib ɛrgúm ‘to cover, put a lid on’, Soq régom ‘to cover, protect’, Jib erógəm ‘to cover (a dead body, with stones and soil)’, rɔ́tgəm ‘(corpse) to be buried’, s̃ergím ‘to be covered, buried alive (as, e.g., a witch)’, rəgmún ‘stoned, covered by stones; covered by stones and soil (in the grave)’, Ar raǧam ‘stones that are placed upon a grave’, raǧǧama ‘to place a stone on one’s grave’.
▪ RǦM_2 : ↗turǧumān, prob. akin to RǦM_1 (via the Akk etymon).
▪ RǦM_3 : ↗ruǧum, akin to RǦM_1.
▪ RǦM_4 : Ø (no cognates, foreign word).
▪ RǦM_5 : as RǦM_1.
▪ RǦM_6 : as RǦM_1.

disc

▪ RǦM_1 and RǦM_3 : Semantics in this Sem root oscillate between ‘to shout, etc.’, ‘to curse’, ‘to stone’, and ‘to cover with stones’. Which was first? According to Huehnergard2011, the primary meaning of Sem *RGM is ‘to say, speak, call, shout, contest, lay claim to’ (as in Akk, Ug, and partly also Ar)—this opinion is substantiated by Kogan2015, cf. above, section CONC. According to Huehnergard, there may also have been a t-stem *t-RGM ‘to speak to one another, translate’ already in protSem times. – The value ‘to curse, damn, revile’ (Ar, Gz) would then be a special development from ‘to shout, contest, lay claim to’, and ‘to stone; stones, missiles’ a transfer of meaning based on the fact that the throwing of stones often accompanied the condemnation of a person or an idol (cf. the symbolic stoning of Satan as part of the ḥaǧǧ rites). The fact, however, that Can (Hbr, Aram) only has ‘to stone’ makes this theory slightly questionable. Nöldeke thought that Ar, which shows both ‘stoning’ and ‘cursing’, had loaned the latter value from Gz, interpreting the epithet of Satan, Gz rəgūm ‘the cursed one’, as belonging to Ar rǧm which, according to this theory, only meant ‘to stone’ but then also came to mean ‘to curse’.
▪ RǦM_2 : Most previous research tends to see Ar tarǧama ‘to interpret’ and turǧumān ‘interpreter’ as—ultimately—dependent on the Akk targumannu and thus on Akk ragāmu ‘to speak, shout, call, etc.’ (RǦM_1) < Sem ] ‘to speak (emphatically), to curse’. Huehnergard2011 would not exclude the possibility of the t-stem *t-RGM ‘to speak to one another, translate’ going back as far as into protSem times. In contrast, Wellhausen1897 thought that the value ‘to explain, interpret’ is a generalisation of a more specific type of explanation, namely interpreting the stones/pebbles that used to been thrown (in the sand) as a heathen mantic practice, the notion of ‘interpreting’ thus being dependent on ‘to throw stones (with the aim of foretelling the future or getting advice)’.
▪ RǦM_3 : Ar ruǧum ‘shooting stars, meteorites’ seems to be the result of a transfer of meaning from the stones that are cast (at s.o. as a punishment, or at the Devil to curse him) on the *‘stones’ that *‘are cast through the sky’.
▪ RǦM_4-6 : See above, section CONC.

west

▪ For Engl dragoman and Targum cf. entry tarǧama.

deriv

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