NB: Older meanings, now obsolete, or dialectal words are marked
BH for BadawiHinds1886,
BK for deBibersteinKazimirski1860,
Bu for Bustānī1869,
H for Hava1899,
R for Redhouse1890, and
St for Steingass1884.▪ QṬR_
1 ‘to fall or flow in drops, drip, dribble, trickle’:
qaṭara; cf. also
qaṭraẗ, pl.
qaṭr,
quṭraẗ, (dimin.)
quṭayraẗ ‘drop; (
fig.) a little, a bit; trifle, paltry thing, (BK) objet de nulle valeur’;
qaṭṭāraẗ ‘pipette’. – Cases of
fig. use seem to be: the expr.
†mā qaṭara‑ka [acc. to others:
bi-ka]
ʕalaynā ‘what has poured thee (
lit., made you drop / came dripping with you) upon us?’; the form V vb.
†taqaṭṭara ʕan (H) ‘to lag behind’ (?
lit., *‘to arrive in
drops, i.e., dribs and drabs, after s.o.’); and the EgAr expr. (BH)
bi-yq͗aṭṭar-li bi’l-q͗aṭṭāraẗ (
lit., *‘he pours in for me with the pipette’ =) ‘he’s very stingy with me’ (overlapping with ↗
qatara ‘to be stingy’, from √QTR!).
Unclear, but perh. some kind of
specialized fig. use as well are:
qaṭara (
quṭūr) in the sense of
†[v
14] ‘(H) to run away, (BK) enlever qc tout à coup et se sauver, (St) travel fast’, (L)
qaṭara fī ’l-ʔarḍ ‘to go away into the country, and hasten’; and the value
†[v
19] ‘in a lump, in bulk’ (mostly in adverbial
quṭran,
qaṭaran).
Partly plausible sounds a derivation of
†[v
22] ‘blackish and poisonous\venomous snake’ from [v1]: Some lexicographers explain the name of the animal as referring to the poison
dripping from its mouth. One can perh. argue similarly for
†[v
16] ‘to be(come) angry’ (< *‘to foam at the mouth out of rage’?), and
†[v
17] ‘to be in foal (she-camel) and show this by raising the tail and the head’ (< *‘dripping from the vagina’?). –
Essentially *‘dripping\dropping substances’ are prob. also
†[v
18] the Qur’anic
qiṭr ‘(molten) brass, copper’ (*‘dripping like pitch’?) and [v
9] in both its varieties, the Qur’anic
qaṭirān (MSA
qaṭrān) ‘tar, pitch’ and the ‘resin, resinous juice made by cooking wood from the cedar, juniper, savin, pine or dragon blood tree’ (
qaṭrān,
qaṭr Makkaẗ,
al-qāṭir al-Makkī , *‘the viscous drops from Mecca’, typically used to treat the skin of scabby\mangy camels). Dolgopolsky2012#963 treats [v1] and [v9] as essentially one and reconstructs WSem *
ḲṬR ‘to drip; pitch’, juxtaposing it to NaIE *
gʷetu ‘pitch’ and deriving both from a hypothetical Nostr *
koṭû *‘sap, pitch’ < ‘to drip, to exude liquid’. However, his reconstruction of the WSem form is based exclusively on the Ar evidence and therefore not particularly strong. Therefore, it may be allowed to ask whether one should not perh. assume a
connection betw. Ar √QṬR ‘to drip, drop, trickle’ and Grk κέ δρος kédros ‘cedar, juniper’. Dietrich (art. “Ḳaṭrān”, in
EI²) mentions that Grk κεδρία
kedría ‘cedar-oil’ was rendered in Ar not only as
qadriyyaẗ, but also as
qaṭrān. As neither the origin of Grk
kédros ‘cedar, juniper’ nor that of Ar
qaṭara or – to match the word class of
kédros – Ar
qaṭr or
qiṭr are known,
1
it may be worthwhile to try out both options: *(a) Grk
kédros < Sem *ḲṬR (> Ar
qaṭr\
qiṭr), or *(b) Sem *ḲṬR > Ar
qaṭr\
qiṭr and Grk
kédros. If any of the two should turn out to be reliable this would still leave the origin of the respective other item unsolved. Blažek2013 proposed to derive Grk
kédros (via Hurrian?) from Akk
qatru ‘smoky’ (smoke emitted from the burning of ‘drops’ of Akk
qatrānu ‘cedar resin’; but the latter value is dubious and a relation betw. ‘smoke’ and ‘cedar resin’ cannot be taken for granted in Akk). However, a borrowing in the reverse direction, i.e., a dependence of Ar
qaṭr\
qiṭr (perh./prob. via another lang.) on Grk
kédros does not seem impossible either. If it could be corroborated, then the Ar vb.
qaṭara would be denom. from the n. denoting ‘resin’, and thus
[v1] would depend in its entirety on [v9]. Yet, it goes without saying that, given the busy exchange of both goods and words along ancient trade routes, we cannot exclude the possibility of the Ar and the Grk having merged in a way that is impossible to disentangle from a modern perspective. – An unorthodox idea on the margin: Can perh. also Grk
katarrʰ‑eîn ‘to flow down, fall down, sink’ or
katarʰátt‑ein ‘to swoop, rush down’ have had played a role? Or is the phonological similarity a pure coincidence? –
Additional aspects do not help to solve the riddle but either leave it as is or come with still more question marks: While [v
2] ‘to filter, filtrate; to refine; to distill’ is rather unproblematic (a caus. of [v
1]; but overlapping in some aspects with [v
8] ‘to fumigate’ and [v
9] ‘tar, pitch’, as these often are obtained by distillation!), a dependence of the
A.2 complex (see section CONC, above), maintained by ClassAr lexicography, on [v1] is doubtful: [v
3] ‘to tie together, line up in a row’, and with it [v
4], [v
10], [v
13], and [v
25], seem to have an etymology in their own right. The same holds true for the values of group
B (*‘smoke; to fumigate’), with [v
8] ‘aloes-wood’ as its main representative (plus perh. [v
7 ] ‘Qaṭar’ and [v
11] ‘Qaṭṭāraẗ’, due to incense trade?): Here, the Sem evidence seems to speak in favour of an origin that is distinct from [v1] ‘to drop’.
If there should be an etymological relation between [v1] and [v8], it is via [v
9] in the sense of ‘aromatic resin (*dripping sap) used for fumigation and sacrifices’. Dolgopolsky actually considers Sem ‘
incense ’ (and deriv.s) as the result of a root merger betw. Sem *ḲṬR ‘to drop; sap, resin’ and Sem *ḲTR ‘smoke; to fumigate’, with the latter fallen together with the first. An unorthodox alternative would be a derivation also of ‘smoke; to fumigate’ from [v1] along the line: *‘to drop’\Grk ‘cedar’ > ‘aromatic resin’ > *‘to burn aromatic resin (to offer a sacrifice)’ > ‘smoke emitted by burnt resin (incense etc.)’ > ‘smoke; to fumigate’. Such a hypothesis would “degrade” the widely attested ‘smoke; to fumigate’ and make it dependent on ‘to drop’ via the ‘aromatic resin (*dripping sap)’ although [v1] ‘to drop’ is not attested in Sem outside Ar, except perh. via [v
9]. Not impossible to imagine, but it would be difficult to prove…
▪ QṬR_
2 ‘to filter, filtrate; to refine; to distill’:
qaṭṭara; cf. also
qaṭr ‘sirup’ – Cf. also Almkvist1891 for
taqṭīraẗ and
qaṭr in the sense of ‘sirup’ etc. (for details, see ↗
qaṭṭara). – The value likely depends on [v
1] but there is overlapping with [v8] ‘smoke; to fumigate’ and [v9] ‘resin (of certain trees); tar, pitch’, produced by “refining, distillation”.
▪ QṬR_
3 ‘file, train (of camels), caravan; (railroad) train; railroad; long series (e.g., of occurrences); to line up (camels in single file and connect them with halters, form a train (of camels); to couple (vehicles); to tow (ship, trailer, glider)’:
qiṭār, ²
qaṭara; cf. also
qāṭiraẗ ‘tractor, tractor truck; locomotive, engine’; in ClassAr, the meaning ‘to tie (camels, mules, etc.) in a file, to make (beasts) march in a row’ is attested also for
qaṭara (vb. I),
qaṭṭara (vb. II), and
ʔaqṭara (vb. IV). In EgAr, ‘to tow’ is the basic meaning of vb. I,
q͗aṭar (u) (BH). *‘To tow, tie, bind together’ may also represent the primary value of the underlying Sem root, which, acc. to Leslau2006, is perh. a
Sem *ḲṮR. Following Dillmann1865, Nöldeke1886, Brockelmann1908, and after them also Leslau1969 and 2006, one would then have to assume a development along the line Sem *ḲṮR > Hbr QŠR > Aram (*QṮR >) QṬR
2
> borrowed into Ar. – Thus, in light of the Sem evidence, a derivation of [v3] ‘to tie together, tow; train, file, row’ from [v
1] ‘to drip, trickle, fall in drops’ (as transfer of meaning from a resin or a liquid to animals etc., both producing a chain\row of uniform elements following each other) appears rather unlikely, although it might be the first thing that comes to mind and could look plausible also in the light of the fact that ClassAr dictionaries sometimes list
qiṭār as one of the pl.s of
qaṭr ‘drop’, so that the idea of ‘many drops/animals’ following each other can easily come in addition to the derivational plausibility suggested by the
C₁iC₂āC₃ pattern and its typically associative meaning. However, the frequency of inner-Sem cognates meaning ‘to tie, bind, etc.’ rather speaks in favour of the
lectio difficilior, i.e., distinct origins of [v1] and [v3]; see, however, above. – The fact that Akk
kaṣāru ‘to tie, knot; to gather’ is also used to describe, among other ideas, the ‘gathering, forming’ of clouds or
smoke may let one think of yet another possible connection, namely betw. [v3] and [v
8]~[v
9], i.e., ‘smoke, fumigation’ ~ ‘incense’ (resin of certain trees) (group
B). – The modern meaning ‘train’ of
qiṭār is of course a neologism, and such are also
qāṭiraẗ, calqued along the PA.f. pattern,
lit. *‘the tracking one’, hence ‘tractor, tractor truck; locomotive, engine’ (and from there also ‘subway car; rail car, diesel’) and the corresponding PP.f. in EgAr
maq͗ṭūraẗ,
lit. *‘the attached one’, hence ‘trailer’ (and, probably also from here, the coarse use of ‘trailer’ in the sense of [v
25]
†‘whore, hooker’). Other cases of semantic specification include the use of vb. I
qaṭara in the obsolete sense of
†[v
13] ‘to sew (a garment, piece of cloth)’; the n.instr.
miqṭaraẗ in the sense of [v
10] ‘chains, stocks’, i.e., a device of punishment and public humiliation consisting of large wooden boards with hinges restraining the culprits’ feet, evidently called
miqṭaraẗ because it puts the culprits and their feet
in a row,
ties them
together. EgAr vb. I,
q͗aṭar, has developed the sense of ‘to trail’ (
ḥaddi q͗aṭar‑ak? ‘Did anyone follow you?’) alongside with ‘to hitch, couple’ and ‘to tow’. – Leslau2006 thinks that this *QṬR is akin to a *QṢR ‘to tie, bind, knot’ (both from Sem *ḲṮR?) that he finds in some Akk (cf. the above-mentioned
kaṣāru), Hbr, SAr and EthSem forms (which also seem to have cognates in Cush Bil
qʷäšär, Kham
qʷaṣär, Sa
qʷasar ‘to tie, knot’); no attempts made so far to reconstruct AfrAs proto-forms.
▪ QṬR_
4 ‘to come in successive groups, crowd, throng, flock (
ʔilà or
ʕalà to s.o., to a place)’: dependent on [v
3] *‘to tie, bind together’, or rather on [v
1] ‘to drop, come in drops’, or [v
8] ‘smoke’ (groups forming
like clouds of smoke), or [v
5] ‘side’? In ClassAr,
taqāṭara is frequently attested with the meaning
†‘to walk side by side’; thus, the forming of groups may be the result of such a ‘walking side by side’ and a dependence on [v
5] the most probable etymology.
▪ QṬR_
5 ‘region, quarter; district, section, part; tract of land; zone; country, land’: ¹
quṭr (Lane vii 1885 mentions also the form
qutr, with non-emphatic
t, but classifies this as dialectal variant). For ClassAr also the meanings
†‘side, flank’ (also ‘either side of a man’) and
†‘climate, region’ are attested, and
quṭr can not only signify a ‘zone, region’ on earth, but also a ‘celestial sphere’.
†[v
12] ‘to overthrow violently\with vehemence, throw s.o. down on one of his sides’ is obviously dependent on [v
5] in the meaning of
†‘side, flank’. So, is this
†‘side, flank’ perh. the primary value?
quṭr can also mean the ‘diameter (of a circle); diagonal’ [v
6]; but is this value related to ‘side, region, zone’ (a diagonal cutting a circle in two zones)? As there are no obvious cognates in Sem nor outside and the inner-Ar evidence is ambiguous, the etymology of
quṭr remains rather obscure.
▪ QṬR_
6 ‘diameter (of a circle); diagonal; calibre, bore (of a tube)’: ²
quṭr. – Any relation to ¹
quṭr ‘side, flank; region, zone’ [v
5], a ‘diameter, diagonal’ seen as the line that cuts a circle into two sides, or zones? The identity of the terms seems to speak in favour of a semantic relation – but what could that be?
▪ QṬR_
7 ‘Qatar (country in eastern Arabia)’: The n.pr.geogr. is attested in ancient sources (C1 Pliny the Elder, C2 Ptolemy) as
Catara (the peninsula),
Cadara (a settlement) and
Catharrei (the inhabitants), but the sources do not tell us what the names may have meant etymologically. Given that trade with incense was an important business in the ancient Middle East one could be inclined to connect the name to this trade, on the same reasons that made Retsö2003 suggest an “incense etymology” for the Biblical name Qᵊṭûrāʰ. But it may also be from ↗
qaṭrān ‘tar, resin’, »in reference to petroleum«, as
EtymOnline proposes. However, as long as there are no cognates and we lack explanations from additional sources, we are left with pure speculation. Given that the root QṬR shows signs of overlapping/merging with others, esp. ↗QTR, this and other phonologically possible options (e.g., ↗QDR?) should be kept in mind.
▪ QṬR_
8 ‘aloes-wood’:
quṭ(u)r;
miqṭar,
miqṭaraẗ ‘censer’, (L)
†qaṭṭara ‘to fumigate\perfume (
ṯawbahū one’s garment) with
quṭ(u)r, i.e., aloes-wood’. For further discussion (origin in Sem *ḲTR/ḲTR ‘smoke’, etc.) see section CONC, above. – Influence (on ‘smoke’) also of ↗
kadar ‘turbidity, muddiness (of liquids, etc.)’, ↗
kadaraẗ ‘lump of earth, earth whirled up, dust’ (*opaqueness)?
▪ QṬR_
9 ‘tar, pitch’:
qaṭrān; in older texts,
qaṭrān appears also in the sense of
†‘resin, dragon’s blood, made by cooking cedar wood or the like, used to treat mangy camels’ (
HDAL),
†‘what exudes from the tree called
ʔabhal [or juniper, or the species of juniper called
savin (Juniperus Sabina), both of which have this name in the present day] and from the
ʔarz [or pine-tree], and the like, when cooked, used for smearing [mangy] camels’ (Lane vii 1885), a sense that is close to (H)
qaṭr Makkaẗ,
al-qāṭir al-Makkī ‘resinous juice of the dragon’s blood’. With this spectrum of meanings,
qaṭrān obviously covers the same domains as Lat
pix and Grk πίσσα
píssa (Attic πίττα
pítta) ‘processed resin, wood tar or pitch’. »Resin was extracted by tapping conifers. The liquid collected was solidified or heated in order to obtain a tar-like product. However, it could also be used in its fresh and unprocessed state. Wood tar was manufactured through dry distillation of wood.«
3
Thus, the common denominator is *‘
viscous substance, originally processed by distillation ’. – On the Qur’anic
qaṭirān, Jeffery1938 remarks: »This curious word occurs only in a passage descriptive of the torments of the wicked on the Last Day, where the pronunciation of the Readers varied between
qaṭirān,
qaṭrān, and
qiṭrān. This last reading is supported by the early poetry and is doubtless the most primitive. / Zam[aḫšarī] tells us that it was an exudation from the
ʔabhal tree used for smearing mangy camels, but from the discussion in
LA, vi, 417, we learn that the philologers were somewhat embarrassed over the word, and we have an interesting tradition that Ibn ʕAbbās knew not what to make of it, and wanted to read
qiṭrin ʔānin,
4
which would make it mean ‘red-hot brass’, and link it with the
qiṭr of 18:96, and 34:12. / The truth seems to be that it is the Aram
ʕiṭrān, Syr
ʕeṭrānā meaning ‘pitch’, which though not a very common word is an early one. Some confusion of /ʕ/ and /q/ must have occurred when the word was borrowed, but it is interesting that the primitive form
qiṭrān of the poets preserved exactly the vowelling of the Aram.
5
« On Jeffery’s caveat regarding an Aram etymology, Pennacchio2014 comments: »Nos prédécesseurs ne semblaient pas connaître le lien entre le /q/ arabe et le
ʕayn /ʕ/ araméen, car A. Jeffery rapporte qu’il y aurait eu une ‘confusion entre le /ʕ/ et le /q/ lors de l’emprunt’ et que les poètes ont conservé la vocalisation entre la poésie
qiṭrān et le Coran
qaṭirān. L’arabe viendrait en fait de l’aram. ancien [oAram] qui marque un /q/ là où l’aram. d’empire [EmpAram] note un /ʕ/.«
6
– The Qur’anic usage of the word may thus indeed be borrowed from, or at least have been influenced by, oAram usage. It may have come in addition to a – prob. older – usage in the sense of ‘resin, resinous juice (of various trees)’, attested not only for
qaṭrān but also in the
qaṭr Makkaẗ or
al-qāṭir al-Makkī ‘resinous juice of the dragon’s blood’. A. Dietrich (in art. “Ḳaṭrān”,
EI² online) explains that this substance was »obtained from several kinds of coniferous trees, especially the Cedrus Libani (Ar
šaǧar al-šarbīn), but also from the Oxycedrus L. and various kinds of cypresses. The substance was already widely used in antiquity for many technical and therapeutic purposes and was not unknown in ancient Arabia: scabby animals were smeared with
qaṭrān (see the references in M. Ullmann,
Die Medizin im Islam, 1970: 217). […]. –
ḳaṭrān smells strongly; as a medicine, it is hot and dry in the third degree; applied to the skin it kills lice and ticks, and is beneficial against scratches, itching, elephantiasis and dropsy. It is also of value against the sting of venomous serpents and promotes the growth of flesh in ulcers«. In accordance with the common denominator identified above – *‘viscous substance, originally processed by distillation’ – Dolgopolsky2012#963 is prob. right in grouping both,
qaṭrān~
qiṭrān ‘wood tar, pitch’ and
qaṭr ‘resinous juice of the dragon’s blood’,
qāṭir ‘dripping; gum’, together with [v
1]
qaṭara ‘to drip’,
qaṭraẗ ‘drop’. For the not unlikely connection between [v1], [v9] and Grk κέδρος
kédros ‘cedar, juniper’, κεδρία
kedría ‘cedar-oil’, see above s.v. [v1] ‘to drip, drop, trickle’. Dolgopolsky assumes a Nostr dimension, juxtaposing hypothetically reconstructed WSem *
ḲṬR ‘to drip; pitch’ and NaIE *
gʷetu ‘pitch’, both from
Nostr *
koṭû *‘sap, pitch’ < ‘to drip, to exude liquid’. –
Deriv.: (H)
†qaṭara ‘to smear (a camel) with
qaṭirān, tar (St: pitch)’; (St)
†qaṭṭāraẗ, pl.
qaṭāṭīrᵘ, ‘place where pitch is boiled’. Perhaps also: [v
7] Qaṭar, [v
11] Qaṭṭāraẗ. As Retsö2003 reports, there are good grounds, too, to connect the Biblical name Qᵊṭûrāh to ‘incense’). – Variants
qiṭrān and
qaṭirān influenced by ↗
ʕiṭr ‘perfume’ and
ʕaṭir ‘sweet-smelling, aromatic’? – Entries in BadawiHinds1886 show that EgAr
q͗aṭrān (and the denom. vb.
q͗aṭran) are also used figuratively, as in Eur langs:
ḥaẓẓ-ī̆ ṭīn wi-q͗aṭrān ‘my luck is rotten (
lit., dust\mud and tar)’,
q͗aṭranit ʕī̆št-ī̆ ‘she’s ruined my life (
lit., made it tarry)’. Old or due to European influence?
▪ QṬR_
10 ‘stocks (device for punishment)’: related to [v
3] (see above).
▪ QṬR_
11 ‘Qattara (depression in the Eg W desert)’: Etymology obscure. Is the region named
Qaṭṭāraẗ because it *‘produced pitch’? The n.f.
qaṭṭāraẗ is attested in ClassAr (among other meanings) as
†‘place where pitch is boiled’… In this case, the n.pr.topogr. would be akin to [v
9]
qaṭ(i)rān ~
qiṭrān ‘tar; pitch’
▪
†QṬR_
12 ‘to overthrow violently\with vehemence, throw s.o. down on one of his sides’:
qaṭara,
qaṭṭara,
ʔaqṭara:
qaṭṭara-hū farasu-hū, (St, L) ‘to throw s.o. down on one of his sides (
said of a horse etc.)’, (H)
ṭaʕana-hū fa-ʔaqṭara-hū ‘he thrusted\pierced him (with his spear) and threw\dashed him down on one of his sides’,
taqaṭṭara (H) ‘to fall on the side; to throw o.s. down from an elevated place’, (St) ‘to throw (
bi‑ s.o.) on his side’. – The fact that the meanings given by the dictionaries all include the specification ‘on one of his sides’ points towards a dependence on [v
5].
▪
†QṬR_
13 ‘to sew (a garment, piece of cloth)’: related to [v
3] (see above).
▪
†QṬR_
14 ‘(H) to run away, (St) travel fast’, (L)
qaṭara fī ’l-ʔarḍ ‘to go away into the country, and hasten’:
qaṭara (
quṭūr): The specification, made in L, that the running takes place ‘
into the country’ suggests dependence of the value on ¹
quṭr in the sense of [v
5] ‘region, country, land’. It seems that sometimes the ‘running away’ is preceded by a ‘taking away’, as in (BK) ‘enlever qc tout à coup et se sauver’, or the expr. (BK, H)
lā ʔadrī man qaṭara-hū \ bi-hī ‘I do not know who has taken it \ run away with it’. Probably also [v
19] (H)
ʔaḫaḏa ’l-bāqiya quṭran ‘he took the rest in a lump’, (R)
qaṭar ‘a buying in bulk by guess or estimation’ is identical with [v14].
▪
†QṬR_
15-17: The vb.s
ĭqṭarra (form IX) and
ĭqṭārra (form XI) can both express 3‑4 ideas that do not seem to have much in common: ‘to begin to dry (plant), (BK) commencer à sécher sur pied’; ‘to be(come) angry’; (used in the f.:) (BK)
†ĭqṭarr‑at ‘to be in foal (she-camel) and show this by raising the tail and the head (she-camel)’, (BK)
ĭqṭārr‑at ‘se sauver, s’enfuir (se dit d’une chamelle, quand elle fuit levant la queue et la tête)’. What could be a common denominator that would justify the use of the same (rather rare!) forms for alle of these ideas? And, is there any semantic relation between any or all of them and one or more of the other values of QṬR? Form IX vb.s usually have a corresponding adj. denoting either a colour or a physical defect, but this rule does not seem to apply here: there is no *
ʔaqṭarᵘ, f. *
qaṭrāʔᵘ. – For the ‘head held high’, see also [v
22] below.
▪
†QṬR_
18: According to Zammit2002, the Qur’anic
qiṭr ‘(molten) brass, copper’ is without cognates in Sem. – The interpretation of
qiṭr as ‘(molten) brass, copper’ is due to Q 34:12 and 18:96 and, according to one reading, also to Q 14:50 (where some exegetes interpret the more common reading
sarābīluhum min qaṭirānin ‘their raiment of pitch’ as
sarābīluhum min qiṭrin/qaṭirin ʔānin ‘their raiment of copper\brass in the utmost state of heat,
or in a state of fusion’, to make it conform to the usual exegesis of 34:12 and 18:96). – Basic meaning: ‘anything that drops or flows’?
▪
†QṬR_
19 ‘in a lump, in bulk’: related to, or identical with, [v
14]?
▪
†QṬR_
20 (H)
qiṭr, (St, BK)
qiṭrī,
qiṭriyyaẗ ‘striped stuff’: ? identical with (BK) ‘
sorte d’étoffe rayée fabriquée à Qaṭar, endroit d’Oman (en Arabie)’: The description in BK (‘fabriquée à Qaṭar’) as well as
HDAL’s explaination of
qiṭr as a kind of ‘
Yemeni clothes’ both suggest that the word(s) should be derived from a certain place on the Arabian peninsula named Qaṭar (but not necessarily identical with the modern Qaṭar).
▪
†QṬR_
21:
qaṭīraẗ, pl.
qaṭāʔirᵘ, n.f., ‘sailing-boat’ is given only by Hava1899 and marked there as a specifically EgAr term. However, the item is not attested anywhere else, not even in BadawiHinds1986. No obvious connection with any other item in the root. – ? Cf./From Engl
cutter ‘small to medium-sized vessel […], [h]istorically […] a smallish single-masted, decked sailcraft designed for speed rather than capacity’ – en.wiki (cf. also, e.g., Ru
káter ‘motorboat’).
▪
†QṬR_
22 ‘blackish and poisonous\venomous snake’: The lexicons differ as to which of the values of √QṬR the snake termed
quṭārī or
quṭāriyyaẗ should be derived from. Two explanations can be found: either from [v
1], on account of the poison ‘dripping’ from the reptile’s mouth, or from
†[v
15] ‘to begin to dry from below (plant)’, referring to the snake’s habitude to hide at ‘feet’ of plants that have started to dry from below. Neither of the two options seems convincing, as it would be more plausible to analyse the words as what they are, namely nisba formations from *
quṭār. The earliest attestation of the latter (acc. to
HDAL_18Jul2020) is a verse (tentatively dated <
609 AD in
HDAL) in which the pre-Islamic poet Zuhayr b. Abī Sulmà mocks a member of another tribe by describing him as
quṭār, explained in the commentary as ‘holding his head high, with the penis dripping due to sexual arousal’.
7
This explanation contains both the notion of ‘dripping, dropping’ [v
1] and that of the ‘head held high’ that also appears in some explanations of v
15-17, se above.
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†QṬR_
23 ‘calamint (plant)’: (Bu)
qaṭūrāʔᵘ, (H)
LevAr qaṭriyyaẗ: calaminth => Acinos arvensis, known commonly as basil thyme and spring savory, now an ingredient in the spice mixture called ↗
zaʕtar.
qaṭūrāʔ => Cotula, a genus of flowering plant in the sunflower family (Asteraceae), includes plants known generally as water buttons or buttonweeds. Cotula is the largest genus found in the Southern Hemisphere of the tribe Anthemideae, section Cotula = largest section with about 40 species; mostly in South Africa, a few in North Africa and Australia.
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†QṬR_
24 ‘mule’: (St)
qāṭir; deriv.
qāṭirǧī ‘muleteer’. From Tu
katır ‘mule’, according to Nişanyan_25Jun2015 perh. from Sogd
χartarē ‘dto.’ (? < Sogd
χar ‘donkey’). Nişanyan (referring to Doerfer sf. III.1395) remarks that it is highly probable that the word is loaned from an Iranian language.
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†QṬR_
25 ‘whore, hooker’: related to [v
3] (see above).
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†QṬR_
26 The value ‘savage\vicious dog’ for ³
quṭr is given only by Ḍinnāwī2004. According to the author, the item is of Tu origin. No details given.
EtymArab doubts very much in the validity of Ḍinnāwī’s information; probably a mistake.
EtymArab
ʔ
