Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ ZKW/Y_1 ‘to thrive; to grow, increase’ ↗zakā / zakiya
▪ ZKW/Y_2 ‘to be pure in heart, be just, righteous, good; to be fit, suitable’ ↗zakā
▪ ZKW/Y_3 ‘alms tax, zakat (Isl.)’ ↗zakāẗ

♦ Semantic value spectrum in ClassAr (acc. to BAH2008): ‘to grow, to flourish; to reach, to attain; to purify, to be purified’

conc

The semantics within this root reflect a rather complex overlapping of original meanings and later borrowings. It seems that, etymologically, two main values/items should be distinguished:

▪ ‘to grow, increase’, most probably attached to a Sem root *ZKW/Y, and
▪ ‘to be(come) clean, pure’, attached to Sem *ḎKW/Y.

Both roots and their values are preserved in MSA. Sem *ḎKW/Y, however, has also gone into Hbr and Aram and taken on a specialized religious-ethical meaning there (initial Sem *Ḏ‑ became Z‑ in both—a regular sound change in Hbr, but probably under Akk influence in Aram; there are however also Aram forms with initial ḏ‑). From there, and with the technical religious sense of ‘moral purity’, the word(s) passed into Ar, coming on top of the values ‘growth’ (√ZKW/Y) and ‘brightness, sharpness, clarity’ (√ḎKW/Y) that already existed there from Sem times. This made √ZKW/Y a homonymous root although, from an etymological point of view, it should have been √ḎKW/Y rather than √ZKW/Y.

hist

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cogn

▪ DRS 8 (1999)#ZKW/Y–1 Ar zakā, zakiya ‘croître, grandir, prospérer, être pur, probe’; Mġr zkā ‘gonfler en cuisant (couscous)’. –2 zakiya ‘avoir soif’. — See also ZKY. –1 See Ḏ/ZKW/Y/K.
▪ DRS 4 (1993)# Ḏ/ZKW/Y/K–1 Akk zakū ‘(être) propre, pur, clair, libre d’obligations’, Hbr zākāh ‘être pur’, zak ‘être clair, pur’, Phn zkʔ ‘pur’, EmpAram dky, zky ‘innocent, pur’, Palm *dk ‘rituellement pur’, Mand dakia ‘propre, pur’, BiblAram zākū ‘innocence’, JP Syr zəkā ‘être innocent’, zākūtā ‘innocence, victoire, règne’, Mand zakaia ‘innocent, victorieux’; Ar ḏakā ‘être égorgé selon les règles (animal)’, ḏakwaẗ ‘oblation (pour le péché)’; zakā ‘être pur, sans tache’, Sab ḏkw ‘égorger, achever’, Ar zakāẗ, Sab zkt ‘grâce divine’, Jib zeke, ziki ‘être pur’, Jib Mhr Ḥrs zekōt ‘aumône’, Gz zakik ‘pur, purifié’, Te zäkat ‘aumône légale, impôt’. Les formes en z semblent des emprunts à l’Akk; au contraire: Bauer OLZ 29:803 pense à un emprunt can. Ces formes Aram seraient passées à l’Ar. Sab zkt = empr. Aram. Pour les formes nommant l’aumône légale islamique, SAr et Eth dépendet évidemment de l’Ar. –2 Ar ḏakiya ‘paraître, pousser, percer’, ḏakā ‘être vif, perçant (esprit), être prompt à comprendre; brûler avec intensité, avec violence (feu), dégager une forte odeur’, Liḥ ḏakaw ‘flamme’, Ar ʔaḏkā ‘allumer, bouter le feu’; ? ‘envoyer’; Sab ḏkw ‘détacher (une troupe)’, ḏky, hḏky ‘envoyer’.

disc

▪ Jeffery1938 thinks that ‘to grow, increase’ (ZKW/Y_1) is the primary value of the root and the only one that Ar has directly from Sem, while ‘purity’ (ZKW/Y_2) and ‘alms tax’ (ZKW/Y_3) for him are Aramaisms. The corresponding root in Ar is not ZKW/Y but ↗ḎKW/Y.
▪ For Huehnergard 2011, [v3] is from Aram zākutā ‘innocence, justification, merit, meritorious deed’, from zəkā ‘to be innocent, be worth, give alms’. The latter (which is also akin to [v2]), H. thinks, is either from Can *zakā ‘to be worth, be worthy’, or Akk *zakû ‘to be(come) pure, innocent’, for which Sem *ḏkw ‘to be(come) clean, pure’ can be reconstructed.
▪ For unknown reasons, DRS in its entry #ZKW/Y-1 neither distinguishes between ‘croître, grandir, prospérer’ and ‘être pur, probe’ nor explains how these values could be seen as one. In fact, they probably can’t: ‘purity’ seems to be a secondary addition based on a borrowing from Aram which, etymologically, is akin to Ar ḎKW/Y rather than to ZKW/Y.

west

▪ Engl zakat ↗zakāẗ.

deriv

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