Bibliotheca Polyglotta

♦ Semantic value spectrum in ClassAr (acc. to BAH2008): ‘to cover, to hide, to cover seed in the soil, to plant seeds, planter; to wear a garment over the shield; to be ungrateful, to hide God’s existence, to deny God, not to believe, to blaspheme, to be an infidel; darkness of night, night; the sea; great valley; rain; to prostrate, to show humility’. – Al-Suyūṭī quotes an opinion that kaffir is a borrowing from either Nab or Hbr.

conc

While kafr ‘village’ and kāfūr ‘camphor’ are loanswords, the vb. kafara in its meaning ‘to cover, hide’ is older (Huehnergard2011: protSem *√¹KPR ‘to wipe clean, polish, purify, cover’). The figurative meanings attached to this vb. and some of its derivations, however, may be Hebraisms or Aramaisms. This is evidently the case with ‘expiation’. But it is less obvious with ‘to be irreligious, infidel’. The latter may be a genuinely Ar innovation – unless the ‘infidel’ originally is the *‘villager’ (as Huehnergard2011 has it), in which case ‘to be irreligious, infidel’ belongs to KFR_2, not KFR_1.

hist

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cogn

▪ DRS 10 (2012)#KPR: With 14 values, this root is one of the most complex in Sem. Out of these 14, however, only 4 are realized in Ar: –1 kafara ‘couvrir, recouvrir; renier les bienfaits reçus, être ingrat envers; être infidèle, incrédule, nepas croire en un dieu unique’. –2 kafr ‘village’. –7 kāfūr ‘camphre’. –13 (Moroccan) kafūra ‘groin’. – For cognates see the entries referred to in the "Nutshell" section above. The dialectal value has no correspondence in MSA, thus no entry.

disc

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west

▪ Engl Capernaum ↗kafr. – Engl giaour, kafir, Kaffir, takfir, takfiri ↗kāfir, ↗kafr.
▪ Engl cyprinid, cyprinodont: cf. perh. Ar ↗kafara.

deriv

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