conc▪ With the exception of [v4] ‘to baptize, christen’, which seems to be a borrowing from Syr, and perh. [v9] ‘to be(come) moistened’, all other values may (as Gabal2012:1554 sees it) derive from the basic idea of *‘firmness, strength, uprightness’, most clearly respresented in the ‘pillar, pole’ (ʕamad, ʕamūd, ʕāmūd) and the corresponding vb. ‘to support’ (ʕamada). – Gabal2012 regards the root √ʕMD as an extension in ‑D of the 2-rad. root nucleus *ʕM‑ to which he ascribes the basic meaning of ‘multitude or meeting/confluence (of several elements), combined with cohesion and uprightness’ (kaṯraẗ aw ĭǧtimāʕ maʕa ĭrtifāʕ wa-ĭltiḥām ʕulwī, ibid.: 1551).
▪ ʕMD_1 : Dolgopolsky2012#135 identifies two common protSem items: a vb. *ʕmd ‘to be raised\propped up, lean against; to stand upright’, and the corresponding n. *ʕamad- ‘support, pole’; in addition, he identifies a specifically WSem variant of the latter: protWSem *ʕa˻m˼mūd- ‘prop, pole of a tent, column, pillar’. As there also seem to be some possible Chad and Cush (and perh. even IE) cognates, the author assumes a Nostr dimension and reconstructs Nostr *ʕ˹o˺m˻˅˼dE ‘to stand upright, rise’. (No protAfrAs form given.)
▪ ʕMD_2 : Related to the preceding? No comparable developments in other Sem langs. But ʕamada seems to have developed (from ʕamūd ‘pole’ as a tool to strike with?) the sense of [v8] ‘to strike, afflict’, and the corresponding intr. vb. ʕamida signifies all kinds of (physical and mental) *‘struckness’. The firmness of resolution that is central to [v2] may thus stem from an original *‘being struck by an idea > to cling, adhere to it’. – Another explanation is given by Gabal2012: 1555-6: he compares the firmness of resolution and intent to the uprightness of a tent pole or the strength of supporting pillar and thus regards [v2] as fig. use of [v1]. – Ehret1995#683 thinks that Ar ʕamada (vn. ʕamd) ‘to purpose, resolve upon; attend to, undertake’ is an extension in »durative« ‑D from a bi-consonantal pre-protSem root *ʕM ‘to apply, put into effect’, from AfrAs *‑ʕīm‑ ‘to apply, put into effect’. Other extensions from the same pre-protSem root would be: ↗ʕMR, ↗ʕML.
▪ ʕMD_3 : ʕumdaẗ ‘village chief, mayor’ and ʕamīd ‘head, chief, dean’ are basically *‘pillars relied upon, or to rely on’ and as such dependent on ʕMD_1, esp. ʕamūd or ʕamad.
▪ ʕMD_4 : prob. a loan from Syr ʕmaḏ ‘to dive, plunge, sink; to penetrate; to dip (in\under water), bath, wash; to be baptized’. – Cf. also †[v9] ‘to be(come) moistened by rain’?
▪ †ʕMD_5 : Together with the semantically close words for ‘pole, pillar’ (ʕamad, ʕamūd etc.), the now obs. †ʕimd ‘branch, twig’ may represent one of the earliest values and in this case almost certainly belong together with [v1].
▪ †ʕMD_6 : In the now obs. sense of ‘to pierce, empale’ the vb. ʕamada is denom. from ʕamad or ʕamūd and thus dependent on [v1] ‘pole, prop, pillar’.
▪ †ʕMD_7 : Like [v6], [v7] ‘to cudgel, cause to fall, throw down’ represents a denom. derivation from ʕamūd; originally, it seems to mean *‘to cudgel, cause to fall, etc., by beating him/her with a ʕamūd’, the latter being attested also in the sense of ‘iron bar, rod of iron with which one beats or strikes’ (Lane v 1874).
▪ †ʕMD_8 : The value spectrum ‘to oppress heavily, strike s.o. (a disease, love, anger, an idea, etc.), to molest, vex, render gloomy, grieve’ attached to ʕamada seems to be fig. use of [v6] and/or [v7], meaning a *‘striking’ or *‘being struck by an idea or an emotion’. This meaning may be at the heart of [v2] ‘firm resolution’.
▪ †ʕMD_9 : The obs. meaning ‘(to be\become) moistened and made sticky by the rain (earth)’ of the intr. vb. ʕamida (a, ʕamad) may be another variant of [v7] *‘to strike / be struck’: earth becoming moistened because it is “struck” by the rain pouring down on it. However, the fact that there is also the adj. ʕamid, which looks rather “basic”, can arouse suspicion as to an assumed secondary character of the value. Therefore, do we perh. have to see it together with [v4] ‘to baptise’ and thereby assume that it is cognate to Syr ʕmaḏ ‘to dive, plunge, sink; to dip (in\under water) (etc.)’?
▪ †ʕMD_10 : The value ‘in the full prime of youth’ belongs to the ‘firmness, strength, uprightness’ of an upright, firm ‘pole, pillar’ etc. ([v1]), additionally underlined here by the doubling of d in ʕumudd or of m in ʕummadānī.
▪ †ʕMD_11 : The meaning ‘to dam in (a water-course), stop, obstruct (a stream)’ is taken from ʕamūd ‘pole, pillar’ and thus a specialised use of [v1] ‘to support’.
EtymArab
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