disc▪ SRː (SRR)_1:
Given the broad attestation throughout Sem, it is safe to assume WSem *šurr- / *surr- ‘navel, navel string’ as the common origin of the Ar, Hbr, Aram and modSAr forms. There might even be a CSem dimension once Ug šr, currently not reliably attested epigraphically, should be established more firmly.
Dolgopolsky2012 #2106 goes beyond that in postulating not only an AfrAs but also a Nostr dimension. The evidence he puts forward for the AfrAs dimension is what he believes to be Berb cognates, all from protBerb *√sr˻w˼; he then sees the Sem and Berb forms together with NatIndEur *ser- ‘thread, string’ (cf. etymonline: IE *ser- ‘to line up’), justifying his reconstruction of Nostr *säR˹U˺ (= *säRo?) ‘sinew, fibre’.
‘Navel’ may well be the etymon from which most of the other values in the Ar root, perh. even all of them, are derived, by metaphorical or allegorical extension. The navel is both the centre of the belly and a small cavity in it. From ‘cavity’, both the ‘hollowness’ of †[v8] and the lines (“furrows, trenches”) of the palm or forehead and, hence, the notion of [v6] ‘(facial) features’ can easily be derived. Something having a navel-like cavity may also be regarded as deficient, hence the extended meaning †‘worn-out, galled’ (ʔasarrᵘ, formed along the ʔaFʕaLᵘ pattern for colours and bodily afflictions) of [v8]. The notion of ‘centre’ (obviously seen as primary value by BAH2008, which, however is hardly tenable, given the many “umbilical” cognates outside Ar) may then have become the starting-point for further semantic changes. The centre or middle can have been identified with [v5], originally meaning †‘the part where the head rests upon the neck’ (hence: ‘neck-rest > bed’); [v7] the ‘middle (of the lunar month)’ (later shifting in meaning to its ‘first, or last, night’; but cf. DISC on [v7] below); and †[v10] the ‘best/choice part of s.th.’, the ‘middle or bottom’ of a valley, offering ‘good soil, excellent terrain’, or the nobility of a social group, usually being regarded as its central representatives. Centre, however, is close also to the innermost part of an object, its essence, its very best, its ‘marrow’ (= again †[v10]), or (if it is, as usually is the navel, invisible, covered, concealed) its innermost [v2] ‘secret’, something ‘hidden’ from the viewer’s eyes. From here, the value †‘pudenda’ developed, to which belongs the [v3] ‘concubine’, as a woman whom a man may let see his pudenda (if the concubine is not the one whom he conceals from his wife, as another interpretation would have it). Along the same lines, †‘fornication’ as well as †‘marriage’ became attached to secrecy, intimacy. In modern usage, al-ʕādaẗ al-sirriyyaẗ ‘the secret habit’ is a common circumscription of ‘masturbation’. – Ultimately, even the [v4] ‘joy, happiness, to make glad’ may have arisen from the pleasures granted by the “meeting of the pudenda”, or the vision of the “hidden secret” of the latter, or the navel, or, simply, by being let into a secret. [v9] ‘bundle of scented herbs’ is said to belong to [v4], as sweet-smelling plants are a cause of pleasure.
The long distance between [v1] ‘navel’ and [v4] ‘happiness, joy’ seems to be the reason why BAH2008 separate the value ‘inside, base (e.g., of the head or the navel), innermost part of an object; secrecy, secrets’ from that of ‘pleasure, delight’. At the same time, by mentioning ‘base of the head’ alongside with ‘navel’, the authors appear to be open to derive also [v5] ‘bed, throne’ from the notion of centre, inside, base. In their list of basic values, they separate the value from the first by a semicolon; but there are others who think that the original meaning of sarīr is *‘the part where the head rests upon the neck’, hence (?) *‘neck-rest > place to rest > bed’. ▪ SRː (SRR)_2 ‘secret, to hide’: probably from [v1] ‘navel, centre, innermost part, essence’. ▪ SRː (SRR)_3 ‘concubine’: usually interpreted as *‘woman whom a man may let see his “secret parts”, i.e., his pudenda’ or *‘woman at whose vulva a man is allowed to look’, or *‘woman whose existence a man conceals from his wife’, all based on the idea of [v2] ‘secrecy, intimacy’. The shift in surriyyaẗ from sirr to surr is usually explained as phonologically motivated. But why such a far-fetched, little plausible explanation? It is easy to interpret the woman’s navel as the secret that the concubine reveals to a man or through which he is attracted to her; thus, [v3] can be derived directly from [v1] rather than from [v2]. – Leslau2006 (CDG) suggests regarding Ar surriyyaẗ as cognate to Gz tasarra ‘to be covered (female animal), be attacked’. ▪ SRː (SRR)_4 ‘joy, happiness, to make glad’: dependence of this value on [v2] ‘secret’ (*‘to experience joy on account of being let into a secret’) is more probable than on [v3] (*‘… being shown the navel/pudenda’). But the semantic distance is still rather great. Alternatively, one may think of ‘joy, happiness, tranquility of the mind’ as the result of ‘affluence, ease’, a value connected to [v5] ‘bed, throne’. But ClassAr lexicographers see it the other way round, see next paragraph. A dependence of ‘joy’ on [v6] ‘line of the forehead, facial feature’, as *‘emotion recognizable from facial expression’, is not considered anywhere. ▪ SRː (SRR)_5 ‘bed, throne’: ClassAr lexicographers tend to relate this value to the preceding, [v5] ‘joy, happiness’, deriving sarīr from surūr ‘pleasure, tranquility of the mind’ because »it [sc. a sarīr] generally belongs to persons of ease and affluence and of authority, and to kings« (hence also the values ‘throne; dominion, sovereignty, rule, authority | dignité royale, royauté; ease, comfort, affluence | bien-être’, with the expr. zāla ʕan sarīrih ‘déchu de son bien-être’, and, as an appellation of good omen, ‘bier, before the corpse is carried upon it’ – Lane iv (1872) | Kazimirski1860). However, as discussed under [v4], it may be the other way round, i.e., ‘bed, throne’ > ‘ease, happiness, peace of mind’. According to SED and Kogan2015, the original meaning of sarīr is †‘the part where the head rests upon the neck’ (a value given also by Freytag1833 and Kazimirski1860), which, actually, also is the value first attested in the sources (555 CE, according to HDAL). So one could think of a development *‘neck > neck-rest > place to rest > bed’. Given another early attestation of sarīr (590 CE – HDAL) as ‘middle (of a valley)’, the assumption made by BAH2008 that one should connect the ‘base of the head, neck’ to [v1] ‘centre, innermost part’, may be correct. In contrast, SED and Kogan2015 suggest for [v5] an origin different from that of [v1]. SED #253 tentatively assumes a Sem *š/sar- or *s/car- ‘vertebral column, backbone’ as the common source of the Ar and some EthSem forms. However, »[s]carce attestation in Ar and MEth only; neither of these languages distinguishes between *š and *s. Note doubling of the second radical and annexation of -w as a third radical in Ar and a full stem reduplication in Eth. See a derived term in Eth and Gur (Sel, Cha, Enn, End, Gye) särsär ‘instrument made of the ribs of a cow and used for leveling the floor’.« The idea, put forward in SED, that this complex is »likely related«, »with a meaning shift«, to modSAr forms meaning ‘behind’ is rejected by Kogan2015: 569 #97. ▪ SRː (SRR)_6 ‘line (of the palm or forehead), feature’: from *‘hollow, cavity’ (cf. [v8]), from [v1] ‘navel (cavity it in the belly)’. ▪ SRː (SRR)_7 ‘last night (of the lunar month)’: The meaning given in WehrCowan is only one of several other options, including †‘commencement\first night of the lunar month’, or its ‘middle’. We would assume that the latter is the original one, cf. also sirr al-šahr / al-layl ‘the middle of the month / the night’. If this is correct, [v7] is rather clearly derived from [v1] ‘navel (> centre, innermost part)’. – In contrast, DelOlmoLeteSanmartín2003 put Ar sarār, var. sarar, together with Ug srr ‘sunset, dawn’ (as in b srr špš ‘at the setting of the Sun’), from a verbal root Ug √srr ‘to set, sink, hide’ (seen as cognate to Hbr swr, srr); Tropper2008 seems to acknowledge that √srr can be a variant of √sw/yr ‘to go away, leave, disappear’ (cf. Ar ↗sāra), but doubts the rendering of Ug srr as ‘sunset, dawn’. ▪ †SRː (SRR)_8 ‘holed, concave’: The adj. ʔasarrᵘ is often applied to a piece of wood used as a touchwood to make fire, but also to a worn-out spear-shaft or a wound in a camel’s breast. The notion of concaveness, common to all of these values, is clearly derived from [v1] ‘navel (cavity in the belly)’. ▪ †SRː (SRR)_9 ‘bundle of scented herbs’: likely dependent on [v4] ‘joy, happiness’, as the herbs/flowers are seen as a cause of pleasure. ▪ †SRː (SRR)_10 ‘best/choice part of s.th., also of a race; good, excellent (soil, terrain)’: from [v1] ‘navel > centre, middle’, or [v8] ‘cavity, bottom’, as the ‘middle/bottom of a valley’ is the most copious and fertile of its parts. There may also be a relation to [v4] the ‘comfort, richness, ease, happiness’ that is usually connected with [v5] ‘bed, throne’.
EtymArab
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