Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ ʕŠW/Y_1 ‘bad eyesight, dim-sigthedness, night-blindness’ ↗ʕašan, ↗ʕišāʔ
▪ ʕŠW/Y_2 ‘evening; evening meal, dinner; evening prayer’ ↗ʕašāʔ, ↗ʕišāʔ
▪ ʕŠW/Y_3 ‘to wrong, treat unjustly, tyrannically’ ↗ʕašwāʔī, ↗ʕišāʔ
▪ ʕŠW/Y_4 ‘informal settlements, slum’ ↗ʕašwāʔiyyāt, ↗>ʕašwāʔī, ↗ʕišāʔ

♦ Semantic value spectrum in ClassAr (acc. to BAH2008): ‘1 bad eyesight, inability to see at night, to be dim-sighted; to feel around aimlessly, to veer away from. – 2 evening, darkness; to make a distant light at night; to give a night meal.

conc

▪ Given that the root apparently does not have any cognates in Sem or outside, we have no clue as to which value is to be regarded as primary—‘dim-sigthedness’, ‘evening, darkness’, or even ‘withdrawal’. The present entry proceeds from the assumption that the verbs are denominative and that the primary meaning of the corresponding n. was s.th. like *‘time of the day when it gets dark and it becomes difficult to see’. The items whose value comes closest to this notion in MSA are ʕišāʔ, ʕašiyy and ʕašiyyaẗ, all signifying ‘evening’. In absence of a self-evident etymon, the author of the present and related entries has chosen ↗ʕišāʔ (as the most ‘basic’ of the three) to serve as the main entry under which to treat the whole complex.

hist

▪ Three major lines of semantic development can be imagined:

1.a) ‘dim-sighted’ > ‘time of dim-sightedness, beginning darkness, evening, early night’ > actions performed at this time of the day: pasture of cattle, dinner; prayer
1.b) ‘dim-sighted’ > ‘to act blindly, overlook, withdraw from’ > ‘at random, haphazardly’
2.a) ‘time of beginning darkness’ > actions performed at this time of the day: pasture of cattle, dinner; prayer
2.b) ‘time of beginning darkness’ > ‘dim-sightedness’ > etc. (as 1.b)
3. ‘to withdraw, turn away’ > (sun) ‘to get dark’ > etc. (as 2.a and 2.b)

The author of the present entry thinks option (2) is the most probable.

▪ eC7 ʕašā (to fail to see, be blinded to) Q 43:36 wa-man yaʕšu ʕan ḏikri ’l-raḥmāni ‘and whoever is blind to the remembrance of the Lord of Mercy’. – ʕišāʔ (the first part of the night marked by the disappearing of the twilight, evening) 12:16 wa-ǧāʔū ʔabā-hum ʕišāʔan yabkūna ‘and they came to their father after nightfall weeping’, (night prayer) 24:58 ṣalāẗi ’l-ʕišāʔi ‘the night prayer’. – ʕašiyy (evening) 38:18 yusabbiḥna bi’l-ʕašiyyi wa-bi’l-ʔišrāqi ‘to sing the praises at evening and sunrise’. – ʕašiyyaẗ (one evening) 79:46 lam yalbaṯū ʔillā ʕašiyyaẗan ʔaw ḍuḥā-hā ‘they had not tarried but an evening or the mid-morning following’.

cogn

Zammit2002 #ʕašā (ʕŠW) ‘to withdraw from’: no cognates in Sem

disc

See CONCISE and SEMHIST above

west

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deriv

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