Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ LFT_1 ‘to turn to one side, look back, divert, distract; gesture’ ↗lafata
▪ LFT_2 ‘left-handed’ ↗ʔalfatᵘ
▪ LFT_3 ‘turnip’ ↗lift
▪ ^†LFT_4 ‘gruel made from the white colocynth’: ^†lafītaẗ

♦ Semantic value spectrum in ClassAr (acc. to BAH2008): ‘to turn to one side, to turn back, to look back, to divert; to distract, to dissuade; to twist; to take care; eesture’

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▪ LFT_1: Akk lapātu ‘to touch lightly, grasp, affect, attack,…’; (caus.) šulputu ‘to make touch, overthrow, defeat, destroy,…’ (CAD), Hbr lāpat ‘to twist, clasp, turn, grasp with twisting motion’ (Klein1987); Aram lappēt ‘to twine around, cling to, clasp’ (Zammit2002); ClassAr ^†ʔalfatᵘ ‘strong-handed’, ^†lafata (vn. laft) ‘to turn, roll about in the mouth; to fold; to turn from’, lafata 'l-māšiyaẗ ‘he beat the camel or sheep or goats, not caring which of them he truck’ (lufataẗ ‘s.o. who beats his camels etc., in this way’), lafata 'l-kalām ‘he sent forth, or uttered, words, without caring what might be the meaning¹ ’ (Lane), ^†lift ‘half; side, edge; inclination towards’; ? ^†lafata (vn. laft) ‘to stir s.th. about and over’, ? ^†lafata (vn. laft, lift) ‘to bark a tree, remove the peel/rind’
▪ LFT_2: Akk (stdBab) lupputu ‘damaged, soiled’; laptu, f. lapittu ‘damaged; anomalous’, liptu A ‘(handi)work, craft, creation (with ref. to human beings), touch (in the physical sense); affliction, disease; (discoloured) spot’, lipittu ‘disease, work, craft’, ClassAr (Lane vii 1885) ^†ʔalfatᵘ ‘(he-goat) having crooked horn, having one of his horns twisted upon, or over the other (also lafat); (in the dial. of Qays) stupid, foolish, of little sense; of difficult or stubborn disposition (also: lafūt); (in the dial. of Tamīm) left-handed, who works with the left hand; (f. laftāʔᵘ) (woman) having distorted eyes’.
▪ LFT_3: Akk (oBab) laptu A ‘turnip’, var. reading (stdBab) liptu B ‘(a vegetable)’, postbibHbr lä̆p̄äṯ ‘turnip; vegetables eaten with bread’, Aram lip̄tā, Syr läp̄tā, lap̄tā, Ar lift ‘turnip’. – Accord. Klein1987, the nHbr ləpātît ‘Hirschfeldia (a genus of plants)’ is formed from lpt ‘to twist’ (cf. LFT_1); the author does not see it together with the lä̆p̄äṯ . – Cf. also the cognates of LFT_1? – Outside Sem: Copt (Sah) latp, (Boh) lapt, lebt ‘salt turnip, pickled turnip’.

1. in all directions, to all sides, turning aimlessly here and there? – SG.

disc

▪ LFT_1: It is difficult to decide whether ‘to touch, grasp, affect’, as in Akk, or ‘to twist, turn’, as appearing in Ar, should be regarded as the older value. I tend to regard ‘to touch, grasp, affect’ as primary, perhaps with the notion of ‘turning, twisting and overthrowing’ already included (as in Hbr). From there, the meanings (a) ‘to distract (attention), attract (the view)’ etc., prominent in MSA, as well as (b) ‘to twist’ and (c) ‘to overthrow, destroy’ can be derived. From (a) is ‘side; half’ (*attention turned away to one side, focus on the other half). From (a), (b) or (c) is LFT_2 (see below). For Ar, Gabal2012 suggests the basic value of √LFT as ‘to twist s.th., turn s.th. from one condition into another, or from one side to the other, or around it so that it sticks to it’ (layy al-šayʔ ʔaw taḥwīluh ʕan ḥāl ʔaw waǧh ʔilà ʔāḫar, ʔaw ḥawla šayʔ fa-yamtasik).
▪ LFT_2 is probably dependent on LFT_1, since ‘left-handed’ originally seems to be either *‘twisted, anomalous’, i.e., s.th. that is “the other way round, turned upside down”, or *‘having a focus on the one/other side’. The value ‘left-handed’ is the only meaning of ʔalfatᵘ that survived into MSA. But ClassAr, where it also can mean ‘having crooked horn’ (goat, cattle)’ and, in the dialect of Qays, ‘stupid, foolish’ or ‘of difficult or stubborn disposition’, or ‘having distorted eyes’, shows that ‘left-handed’ is only one out of a variety of meanings that developed from a more general *‘twisted, distorted, anomalous’. Cf. also the fact that ‘left-handed’, for some ClassAr lexicographers, seems to have been a specific use of the word in the dialect of the Tamīm tribe.
▪ For LFT_3 a Copt etymology has been suggested (Youssef2003), while the nHbr word for a similar plant is explained as derived from ‘to twist’. So, perhaps, there is a relation between LFT_3 ‘turnip’ and LFT_1 ‘to twist, turn’? This would be an interesting parallel to Engl turnip that is thought to be composed of turn (»from its shape, as though turned on a lathe«, etymonline.com) and mEngl nepe ‘turnip’. However, given the fact that there are Akk and Syr cognates, the most probable etymology is (as also put forward by Ullmann, WKAS, following Zimmern1914) that the word is of Akk or Aram origin.
▪ ^†LFT_4: ClassAr ^†lafītaẗ, described as ‘[a certain kind of gruel] made by straining water [or juice, or a decoction] of the white colocynth, then putting it into a stone cooking-pot, and cooking it until it has become thoroughly done and thickened, and then sprinkling flour upon it’ (Lane vii 1885), looks distinct from the other values, though it is unlikely that it does not belong to one of them. But how?

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