Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ SḪR_1 ‘to scoff, mock, ridicule; masquerad; irony’ ↗saḫira
▪ SḪR_2 ‘to subject, make subservient, employ, utilize; forced labour, corvée’ ↗saḫḫara
▪ SḪR_3 ‘to have a good wind (ship)’ ↗^†saḫara
▪ SḪR_4 ‘kind of Hyoscyamus, narcotic, henbane’ ↗^†suḫḫar

♦ Semantic value spectrum in ClassAr (acc. to BAH2008): ‘to force, to constrain, to be made subservient, to use as a subject of forced labour; to ridicule’

conc

With the exception of SḪR_4 ‘henbane’ (but perhaps also this value), all values of √SḪR may go back, as suggested by Huehnergard, to one primary Sem *ŠḪR ‘to be(come) fearful, intimidated, stock-still’. For details, see DISC below.

hist

▪ See DISC below.
▪ For ClassAr, Badawi2008 gives the two main values of √SḪR as ‘[1] to force, to constrain, to be made subservient, to use as a subject of forced labour; [2] to ridicule’

cogn

▪ (following the suggestion in Huehnergard2011) CAD: Akk šuḫarruru (var. šaḫurruru, šuḫurruru, šuḫruru) ‘to become dazed, still, numb with fear; to abate, subside’, šaḫurratu (var. šuḫurratu, šuḫarratu) ‘awesome stillness’; cf. also šaḫrartu ‘deathly silence; devastation’, šuḫarriš (var. šuḫurriš) (adv.) ‘in numbed silence’.
▪ For [v2] cf. Aram šaḥēr ‘to confiscate, press into public service’, Syr šaḥar (Pa) ‘to levy forced service, compel, impress’, šaḥrūṯā ‘forced labour’.
▪ BDB1906 mentions [v1] Ar saḫara ‘to mock at, deride’ in the entry on Hbr sāḥar ‘to go around, travel about in’ (for which also cf. Syr sḫar ‘to go about as beggar, be beggar’, Akk saḫāru ‘to turn, surround; to return’). But letting an interrogation mark precede the juxtaposition, the authors obviously hesitate to accept this connection.
▪

disc

▪ Without further explanation, Huehnergard2011 suggests a Sem šḫr ‘to be(come) fearful, intimidated, stock-still’ as the etymon of [v1], Ar saḫira ‘to jeer, scoff’. Obviously, he sees Akk šuḫarruru ‘to become dazed, still, numb with fear; to abate, subside’ as cognate to Ar saḫ˅ra. If he is right, then the primary meaning of the Ar vb. would be the one conserved in [v2] ‘to subject, make subservient’ (< *‘to intimidate’, caus. of vb. I, *‘to be fearful, numb with fear’) and [v3] ‘to have good wind (ship)’ (< *‘to make the wind subservient’, or *‘to obey to the wind’), while [v1] would probably be secondary, its semantics being derived from ‘to make subservient’ (‘to jeer, scoff, ridicule s.o.’ < *‘to make s.o. look as poor and ridiculous as if subjugated’, perhaps also in the special sense of ‘forced into corvée or doing compulsory labour’) or from *‘to intimidate’ (‘to jeer, scoff, ridicule’ < *‘to intimidate, make numb’ through mockery). In this case, however, one would have to assume Ar saḫara, not saḫira as the corresponding trans. vb. I (saḫira is constructed with min or bi‑ and, thus, intrans.). Another explanation could be that saḫira is a secondary formation, re-interpreted from vb. II., or denominative from one of the many vn.s meaning ‘forced labour, corvée’ which could be a borrowing from Syr, cf. ↗saḫḫara.
▪ [v2] is attested also in Aram Syr.
▪ [v3] is explained in some ClassAr dictionaries as being based on the notion of ‘making subservient’: a ship has a good wind ‘as though it makes the wind subservient, or submissive, to itself’, or ‘as though it obeys and runs the wind’s course’.
▪ [v4] If the plant is identical with ↗saykurān and, hence, toxic/narcotic, there may be a connection to (as in Akk) ‘to become dazed, still, numb’.
▪ Gabal2012 regards Ar √SḪR as an extension of a biconsonantal basis *SḪ ‘to be soft, smooth’. [v3] saḫara ‘to have a good wind’ is explained as *‘to let o.s. be drawn smoothly, without resistance’, something that implies a certain ‘lightness, ease’ (ḫiffaẗ). This ‘lightness’ is also to be found in [v1], ‘to jeer, scoff, mock’ actually meaning *‘to value lightly, disdain, look down upon, (hence also) not to take seriously’. As a lack of resistance is a result of a certain weakness, an extension of meaning into [v2] ‘to subject, make subservient (s.o. who is weak, does not show resistance’) is easily conceivable.

west

▪ For Engl mask, to mask, masked, masking, masque(erade), see ↗saḫira ‘to mock, ridicule’.

deriv

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