Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ LḤN_1 ‘to speak ungrammatical Arabic (interspersed with barbarisms)’ ↗laḥana
▪ LḤN_2 ‘air, tune, melody’ ↗laḥn
▪ LḤN_3 ‘intelligent, understanding, sensible’ ↗laḥin

Other values, now obsolete, include:

LḤN_4 ‘to incline’ : ^†laḥana a (laḥn) (ʔilà to)
LḤN_5 ‘to drop\give a veiled hint, speak in code, allude to, hint at’: ^†laḥana a (laḥn) (li- to); cf. also ^†lāḥana, vb. III, ‘to make insinuations’; ^†ʔalḥana, vb. IV, ‘to intimate s.th. to s.o., to give s.o. to understand s.th.’

♦ Semantic value spectrum in ClassAr (acc. to BAH2008): ‘1 dialect, language; 2 to err in speaking or reading, deviate; 3 to speak in code, allude to, hint at; 4 tune, to read melodically’

conc

▪ Apart from an uncertain item in Ug, Ar √LḤN does not seem to have cognates in Sem, nor outside Sem.
▪ Fück1950 derives values [v1] to [v3] and [v5] from the now obsolete ^†laḥana ‘to incline’ (LḤN_4), but this seems slightly doubtful. To the author of the present entry, what Fück thinks to be secondary, dependent on ‘to incline’, namely the idea of ‘deviation, modification, modulation’, seems more likely to be the “etymon proper”.
▪ LḤN_2: Günzburg1892 thought that laḥn in the sense of ‘air, tune, melody’ and Grk liχanós ‘tone’ probably go back to the same (Sem) source. Developing on this, LandbergZetterstéen1942 derives Ar laḥn from Grk liχanós ‘forefinger; (hence also:) the string struck with the forefinger, and its note’. Though semantically not without some plausibility, phonologically this etymology would be difficult to explain.

hist

▪ …

cogn

▪ LḤN_1 : Zammit2002: Ar laḥn ‘a vicious pronunciation’ is without parallels in the langs the author has looked at (Akk, Ug, Hbr, Phoen, Aram, Syr, SAr, Gz).
▪ LḤN_3 : Tropper2008: Ug lḥn (meaning uncertain!) ‘to be understanding, intelligent’ or ‘to be closely related (to s.o.)’ (cf. Ar laḥḥ ‘close relationship’).

disc

▪ According to Fück1950: 128-33, all values of the Ar root go back to one basic meaning, namely 0 ‘to incline, lean towards’ [= LḤN_4], indicating any deviation from/modification of the normal (position, situation). Directly from here Fück derives 1 the adj. laḥin *‘flexible, mobile, agile’ = ‘clever, intelligent, perspicacious’ and the n. ^†laḥan ‘cleverness, comprehension, perspicacity’ [= LḤN_3] and an extension into the field of speaking, with 2 *‘abnormal way of speaking’, forming a new extended base from which derive other values like 2a ‘eloquence’, or 2b ‘melody’ [= LḤN_2], or 2c ‘talking in riddles full of hidden meanings\veiled hints\allusions\insinuations’ [= LḤN_5], or 2d ‘delusive expression’, and, finally, 2e downright ‘grammatical mistake, blunder’ [= LḤN_1]. According to Ayoub, the positive connotations are earlier than the negative ones (art. “Laḥn” in EALL).
▪ Is Fück correct? WKAS does not have Fück’s ‘to incline, lean towards’ as a basic value. It seems that the latter rather is secondary, based on ‘deviation, modulation, modification’; it is right that laḥana can mean ‘to incline’, but only in the particular sense of ‘to incline to s.o., lean towards s.o., show affection to s.o. ’, i.e., to a person, cf. the lexicographers’ explanation of laḥana li- (which is similar to ʔilà) as ‘to talk to s.o. in a way that only he understands (it remains unintellegible to others)’ (laḥana la-hū ʔiḏā qāla la-hū qawlan yafhamu-hū ʕan-hu wa-yaḫfī ʕalà ġayri-hī) (≈ LḤN_5); so, the ‘inclination’ or ‘affection’ is a way of talking ‘abnormally’, or the result thereof.
▪ [LḤN_2] For the idea that laḥn ‘melody’ may be from Grk liχanós ‘forefinger (etc.)’, cf. ↗laḥn.

west

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deriv

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