▪ For an own attempt at a synthesis, integrating all Ar non-borrowed values, see above, end of section CONC.
▪ For possible deeper (Sem, pre-protSem, AfrAs) dimensions and the evidence put forward by the authors of corresponding theories, see ↗*NǦ‑, ↗*NǦ‑_1 and ↗*NǦ‑_2 (for Ehret); ↗*NǦ‑ and
†NǦL_
16 below (for Ǧabal);
†NǦL_
11 (for Orel&Stolbova’s *‘to throw’) and
†NǦL_
4 (for Orel&Stolbova’s *‘sickle; to reap, cut’).
▪ Like Orel&Stolbova, Dolgopolsky2012 #1582 distinguishes two main Sem values (based on the Ar evidence): a
first one corresponding to Ar
naǧala,
u, ‘to rip up, skin (a beast) from the hocks
†[v
9]; till (the ground)
†[v
15]’, and a
second one corresponding to Ar
naǧala,
i, ‘to erase (a writing)’
†[v
10], ‘to strike off pebbles’ (camel)
†[v
11], ‘to pierce (with a spear)’
†[v
15]. – He sees cognates in Chad (MfG
́‑ngɜl‑ ‘cueillir, arracher’, Mf
ń̥gʷalala ‘fête de récolte’,
ngɜl‑ ‘to cut’) and perh. Eg (Pyr)
ngȝ ‘to kill, slaughter’,
1
(GrkRom)
ngȝ ‘die Glieder zerfleischen, den Augapfel ausreißen’, and reconstructs Sem *√
NGL < AfrAs *√
NGL < Nostr *
ńogü˹lͅ|ĺ˺˅ ‘to tear out\asunder, pinch, flay’ (reconstructed on account of assumed parallels in other macrofamilies). ▪ NǦL_1
naǧala ‘to beget’,
naǧl ‘offspring’: no obvious cognates. – Dillmann and Barth (quoted in Leslau1987: 391) suggested to connect Ar
naǧl with Gz
nagad ‘tribe, clan, kin, stock, kindred, progeny, lineage, family’; Leslau himself, however, thinks this is »doubtful«. Equally or even more unlikely, according to Leslau1987: 137, is the derivation (suggested by Praetorius1879: 77) of Gz
dəngəl ‘chaste (young man), celibate (monk), virgin’ from Ar
naǧala ‘to beget’. – Etymology suggested by
EtymArab: *
†[v
11] ‘to throw away, fling, strike off (a spear, etc.)’ > thereby
†[v
15] ‘split, pierce (s.th.)’ and cause a [v
2] ‘wide opening’ >
†[v
16] ‘opening through which water flows out, spring’ > [v
1] ‘to beget’ (< *ejaculation of sperma). – There may have happened some contamination with ↗NSL (
nasala ‘to beget, procreate, father’,
nasl ‘progeny, offspring, descendants’).
▪ NǦL_2
ʔanǧalᵘ ‘large-eyed, wide (eye), gaping (wound)’: no immediately obvious cognates in Sem or outside Sem; but prob. akin to
†[v
15] ‘to pierce, split’ (incl. ‘opening made in the earth to plant s.th.’) and/or
†[v
16] ‘outflowing water, spring’, and perh. also
†[v
19] ‘broad path’. – Etymology suggested by
EtymArab: *
†[v
11] ‘to throw away, fling, strike off (a spear, etc.)’ > thereby
†[v
15] ‘split, pierce (s.th.)’ and cause a [v
2] ‘gaping wound’ > ‘“gaping” eyes, wide opening (in general)’.
▪ NǦL_3
naǧīl ‘couch grass, orchard grass (Dactylis;
bot.); quitch (
bot.)’: no immediately obvious cognates in Sem or outside Sem. – Etymology suggested by
EtymArab: *
†[v
11] ‘to throw away, fling, strike off (a spear, etc.)’ > thereby
†[v
15] ‘split, pierce (s.th.)’ and cause a [v
2] ‘wide opening’ > to break through this opening,
†[v
18] burst out and spread > grass that does so = [v
3] ‘couch grass, orchard grass’. – For other options, cf. main entry, ↗
naǧīl.
▪ NǦL_4 ‘scythe, sickle’: Among all the items ascribed to the root √NǦL, Ar
minǧal is certainly the most widely discussed one. However, opinion differs considerably as to the possible origin of the word. We may distinguish two main types of theories put forward so far: (a) extra-Sem borrowing, (b) inner-Semitic development, either through inner-Sem borrowing or a common Sem origin.
Ad (a): Extra-Sem borrowing appears likely to some due to the »fact«, as e.g. Corriente2008: 101-2 has it, »that Ar
minǧal does not appear to derive from a rather uncommon verb
naǧala« and that reflexes of
minǧal in Neo-Arabic dialects are relatively rare. (See however below for
EtymArab’s ideas on possible inner-Ar dependence.) Also in favour of a borrowing from outside Sem is the scarcity of Sem
verbs belonging to Sem √NGL. As a consequence, Sum, Eg, Copt, and Grk etyma have been suggested. A
Sum origin is considered possible by
CAD for Akk
niggallu ~
ningallu ‘sickle’ (from oBab, oAss on) [whence the word may have entered Sem, then with Akk
n‑ > WSem
m‑; more specifically, one could imagine a development *Sum > Akk > Aram > Hbr, Ar; or *Sum > Akk > Hbr > Aram > Ar]. However,
CAD does not specify the alleged Sum etymon. (VonSoden ii 1972 classified Akk
niggallu ~
ningallu as »unbekannter Herkunft«, i.e., of unknown provenience, though certainly not originally Akk.) Rolland2014 first reports another theory (Ar < Copt < Grk, see below), then adds his »hypothèse personnelle« that
minǧal may also be akin to Akk
ikkāru ‘plowman, farm laborer; farmer’ (> Ar ↗
ʔakkār ‘plowman’), which is a borrowing from Sum
engar ‘irrigator, farmer’ (<
en ‘lord’ +
agar ‘field’ – Halloran3.0). This etymology seems problematic for phonological reasons: Rolland does not explain why
minǧal should have preserved the Sum
‑ng‑, while all other items derived from Sum
engar show
‑kk‑; his hypothesis presupposes a more or less
direct borrowing of Ar
minǧal from Sum, while
ʔakkār would have gone through Akk. – A Sum connection is rejected in total by Orel&Stolbova1994 and Militarev&Stolbova2007 in view of the comparative (Sem and AfrAs) data. They think they have found enough cognates, both within and outside Sem, to justify an ultimately AfrAs origin: reconstructing Sem *
mi‑/ma‑ngal‑ ‘sickle’, *
n˅gil‑ ‘to mow, reap’, and Chad *
n˅gi/ula(‑t) ‘sickle’ (WCh *
n˅gal‑at‑ ‘sickle’, CCh *
n˅g˅l‑ ‘to cut’, *
n˅gi/ul(‑at)‑ ‘sickle, knife’, ECh *
ʔa‑ngul‑ ‘sickle’), they postulate (1994) AfrAs *
n˅gil‑ ‘to cut’, or, slightly more cautiously (2007), AfrAs *
ngl ‘to reap’. In any case, the Chad evidence (see COGN) would speak against the theory that assumes a borrowing Sum > Akk > WSem – otherwise the Chad terms would have to be borrowings from Sem. – Zimmern1914 does not mention Ar
minǧal or any of its Sem cognates as a borrowing from Akk. Furthermore, if the borrowing was Sum > Akk > WSem, the word-initial sound shift Akk
n‑ > WSem
m‑ will have to be explained. – A (
Grk >)
Copt > Ar etymology is reported and supported by Rolland2014, considered possible by BadawiHinds1986 (at least for EgAr
mangal ‘type of large sickle’), and discussed in some detail by Corriente2008: Ar
minǧal, EgAr
mangal ‘sickle’ < Copt
mančale ‘pickaxe, hoe’ < Grk
makélē ~
mákella ‘id.’. Corriente is reluctant to accept this etymology, given that the instrument signified by the Copt and Grk words is a ‘pickaxe, hoe, mattock’, while the Ar words mean a ‘sickle’. Furthermore, against a Grk origin would speak the fact that the Egyptians were »established farmers« and one has to wonder why such a people should »borrow the name of an agricultural tool from abroad«. Therefore, Corriente concludes, it is more likely that the borrowing went the other way round and happened much earlier, i.e., from
Eg into Grk and Sem. Grk would have preserved the original meaning, while the semantic shift in Sem »might be explained by a borrowing in a time when western Semites still lived mostly as nomads, scarcely interested in agricultural lore«. However plausible this may sound, Corriente does not give us the Eg word of which Copt
mankʸale ~
mančale would be the successor and that could have gone into Grk and Sem. The fact is: it seems that there is no such word at all, the Eg terms for ‘pickaxe, hoe, mattock’ being rather different from Copt
mančale or Grk
makélē ~
mákella. – Thus, there seems to be only one way out of the dilemma: While Copt
mančale may well be from Grk
makélē ~
mákella, the Grk item itself should be assumed to be either a completely inner-Grk affair, or a borrowing from a Sem language, most probably Hbr
maggāl or Aram
maggəlā. Phonologically, this does not look impossible (although the
‑n‑ in Copt
mankʸale ~
mančale would have to be explained), and the semantic distance between Sem ‘sickle; scythe’ and Grk/Copt ‘pickaxe, hoe, mattock’ is not too far. Beekes2009: 894, too, would not exclude that Grk
makélē and the Arm
markeł ‘mattock’ are both loans »from a common source« (which we think could well have been a Sem language). Moreover, as Ar NǦL_
2 and
†NǦL_
15 show, ‘sickle, scythe’ is only a rather specialized development, while a more basic value is *‘to pierce, split’, and thereby ‘make an opening in the earth to plant s.th., till the ground’. So, while Westendorf2008 is probably wrong in assuming that Copt
mankʸale ~
mančale is a loan from Ar
minǧal, he may have understood that the origin of the Copt word ultimately could be Sem.
Ad (b) Sem origin and inner-Sem borrowing: It is obvious that Hbr
maggāl, Syr
maggǝlā ‘sickle’, Mand
manglia ‘scythes’, and perh. also Akk
niggallu ~
ningallu ‘sickle’, are akin to Ar
minǧal. If the Akk word is a loan from Sum (see above), the similarity with the WSem words is either a mere coincidence or it was the Akk word that went into WSem. In the light of the Chad evidence, Orel&Stolbova1994/Militarev&Stolbova2007 reject the idea of a borrowing from outside Sem. If one follows their argument (see above), then a Sem *
mi‑/
ma‑ngal‑ ‘sickle’, *
n˅gil‑ ‘to mow, reap’ may be the etymon common to both the ESem (Akk) and WSem terms, all deriving
directly from one common ancestor, without inner-Sem intermediates. In contrast, Jeffery1938, for instance, thinks that Ar
minǧal is an inner-Sem loan, from Hbr
maggāl or Syr
maggǝlā. (Jeffery explains the additional
‑n‑ in Ar
minǧal as opposed to the Can forms as a common phenomenon in Ar loan-words, cf., e.g., Ar ↗
kanf ‘(palm of the) hand’ < Syr
kappā, or Ar ↗
qunfuḏ ‘hedgehog’ from Hbr
qippōd, Syr
quppəḏā, or Ar ↗
ḫinzīr from Hbr
ḥzīr, Syr
ḥzīrā, etc.). Fraenkel1886 tends to make Ar
minǧal dependent on Syr
maggəlā (with dissimilation of Syr *
‑gg‑ > Ar
‑nǧ‑) because, according to him, the Ar vb.
naǧala only means ‘to pierce’ (
†NǦL_
15), and the value ‘sickle’ would be difficult to derive from ‘to pierce’. (As the disambiguation section above shows, Fraenkel is completely wrong here: first, because there are many more values than ‘to pierce’; and second, because the sickles used in ancient times may have looked similar to some kind of pickaxes, or hoes, or mattocks, so that his argument is not very strong. Furthermore, the tool designated by a Sem n.instr. (Militarev2002: Sem *
mi‑/
ma‑ngal‑) formed from the root *NGL was not necessarily always a sickle, but may at some – unfortunately still unattested – stage also have been a sickle-shaped hoe; see below.) –
BDB1906 list Hbr
maggāl under the hypothetical root Hbr √NGL – there is no corresponding verb, which is why the root itself is said to be »of unknown meaning«! – and mention Ar
†naǧala, vb. I, ‘to strike, split, pierce’ (
†NǦL_
14,
†NǦL_
15) as a probable, though »very infrequent«, cognate; Ar
minǧal is put alongside with Hbr
maggāl although the Ar word is »possibly from Aram«. – Leslau1987: 392 thinks Ar
minǧal is derived from Ar
naǧala in the sense of ‘to remove the skin from a slaughtered animal’ (
†NǦL_
9); however, he does not regard this as an exclusively Ar value but as part of a wider Sem picture to which also Soq
ngl ‘to make go out’, Syr
naggel ‘to remove’, Gz
nagala ‘to be uprooted, roll, roll up, make into a ball’ belong, so that, for Leslau, the Sem ‘scythe, sickle’ etymologically is the *‘instrument that removes, uproots’. – In our opinion, the latter could reflect the stage in the semantic development of items from the root NGL/NǦL in which a Sem word was loaned into Copt and/or Grk, hence the meaning ‘pickaxe, hoe, mattock’, i.e., tool with which the soil is cultivated (*pierced, split, opened, widened, cf.
†[v
15]). – There seems to have been, in earlier research on
minǧal, a kind of “filter bubble” that tended to believe that the semantic distance between ‘sickle’ and the other values found in the Ar root was too big to be explained by derivation; therefore, Sum, Eg, Copt, Grk etyma were voluntarily accepted. But as the above discussion has shown, these etymologies are often rather problematic, so that a dependence of the Sem ‘sickles’ on the value
†‘to strike, split, pierce; to till (the ground)’ should not be excluded (although the vb. is »rather uncommon« with this meaning, as Corriente2008 has it, or even »very infrequent«, as
BDB1906 marks it). –
The
Etymology suggested by EtymArab combines elements from both theories discussed above. We think that the term for ‘sickle’ was borrowed from Sum into Akk, then from Akk into WSem, where it however began to interact with an already existing root √NGL/NǦL. Until the moment of borrowing, semantics in the Sem root had developed along the line:
†[v
11] ‘to throw away, fling, strike off’ >
†[v
15] ‘to split, pierce (s.th. with a spear)’. From here, two alternatives are possible: a) …> ‘to split = to dig up the earth, till the ground’ > tool used to do so = *‘hoe’ (no attestions for the tool, only for the vb.); b) … > ‘to split =
†[v
9] = to rip up, skin (a slaughtered animal) from the hocks’ > instrument to do so. When the ‘sickle’ then was borrowed into Sem, the term was eventually adapted in form to Sem word patterns (causing initial Sum/Akk
n‑ > WSem
m‑) and began to interfer with the earlier meanings ‘instrument to pierce, till the ground’ or ‘instrument to skin an animal’, until it superseded as ‘scythe, sickle’.
▪ NǦL_5 ‘bench vice’: BadawiHinds1986 gives the origin of EgAr
mangalaẗ as Grk
méngelē. This is probably a variant of μέγγενη ~ μέγκενη /méŋgeni/ ‘vice’, according to Wiktionary a loan from Tu
méngene ‘press, vice, screw-jack, clamp’ which, according to Nişanyan_27Jan2018, is in its turn from modGrk μάγγανο(ν) /máŋgano(n)/ ~ μαγγάνι /maŋgáni/ ‘calender, machine to calender cloth or linen, mangle, press; winch, windlass’ < (Nişanyan) oGrk μάγγανον /máŋganon/, lit. ‘means for charming or bewitching others, philtre’, but then also ‘block of a pulley’ (LiddellScott1940).
▪ NǦL_6 ‘anglification’:
ʔangalaẗ, vn.f., from vb.
ʔangala ‘to anglify’, neologism formed after regular pattern for 4-rad. vb.s (
FaʕLaLa) from a hypothetical ↗√ʔNGL.
▪ NǦL_7 ‘gospel’: lw., prob. via Gz
wangēl from Grk εὐαγγέλιον
euangélion ‘god tidings, gospel’, sometimes treated lexicographically as if from a hypothetical ↗√ʔNGL.
▪ NǦL_8
ʔangūlā ‘Angola’: from the n.pr.geogr. (Engl?)
Angola, sometimes treated lexicographically as if from a hypothetical ↗√ʔNGL.
▪
†NǦL_9 ‘to remove the skin from a slaughtered animal’: Leslau1987: 392 thinks that with this value, Ar
naǧala is cognate to Soq
ngl ‘to make go out’, Syr
naggel ‘to remove’, Gz
nagala ‘to be uprooted, roll, roll up, make into a ball’ as well as [v
4] Ar
minǧal ‘sickle’ (*‘instrument that removes, uproots’). – Ehret1989 #57 saw similarities between this and other Ar vb.s such as
†naǧaba ‘to remove the bark from a tree’, ↗
naǧara ‘to cut or plane wood’,
†naǧafa ‘to shave or polish an arrow’,
†naǧafa ‘to cut down, pull out’, and
†naǧā (
naǧw) ‘to cut down a tree and strip off its branches, skin a camel’ and reconstructed a bi-cons. pre-protSem root *
NG ‘to strip’, from which all these values are thought to be derived by the addition a modifying third radical. – Ehret does not go farther back behind the pre-protSem stage, but the overall situation in Sem and AfrAs seems to allow the assumption of 1-2 earlier stages (etymology suggested by
EtymArab):
†[v
11] ‘to throw away, fling, strike off’ >
†[v
15] ‘to split, pierce (s.th. with a spear)’ >
†[v
9] ‘to rip up, skin (a slaughtered animal) from the hocks’. In this way,
†[v
9] could be seen as going back to Sem *
n˅gil‑ ‘to throw’ and, ultimately, AfrAs *
n˅gol‑ ‘id.’, as suggested by Orel&Stolbova1994 (see
†[v
11], below).
▪
†NǦL_10 ‘to blot out, erase (a writing), wipe the writing-tablet’: no obvious cognates. – According to Ehret1989, with this meaning Ar
naǧala is derived by extension in *
‑l from pre-protSem
*NG ‘to strip’. – Etymology suggested by
EtymArab: probably semantic extension of the preceding (
†[v
9]), where the blotting out is seen as a kind of scraping off the skin from a slaughtered animal; alternatively, erasing a writing or wiping a writing-tablet could be regarded as a new [v
2] “opening” in the sense of new ‘beginning’.
▪
†NǦL_11 ‘to throw away, fling, strike off (with a foot or leg, e.g., pebbles) (vb. I); ? to remove water from the foot of a wall (vb. VIII)’: This is perh. the same as
†[v
14] ‘to strike, beat, push, drive’. – Cf., however, Orel&Stolbova1994 #1897 and Militarev&Stolbova2007 where Ar
naǧala,
i, is thought to derive from a Sem *
n˅gil‑ (OrSt) or *
n˅gul‑ (MSt2007) ‘to throw’, a reconstruction that has no other foundations in Sem than the Ar evidence
2
but seems to be justified nevertheless, in the authors’ eyes, in the light of what they think to be cognates in WCh *
ngwal‑ ‘to throw’, Sem and WCh both deriving from AfrAs *
n˅gul‑ (MSt2007) or *
n˅gol‑ (OrSt1994) ‘to throw’. While Orel&Stolbova and Militarev&Stolbova assume this ‘throwing away’ to be one out of
two basic values,
EtymArab tends to regard it as the one on which also these authors’ second basic value, *‘to cut’ (> ‘sickle, to reap’, see [v
4] above), may depend, given that ‘cutting’ is very similar to ‘splitting, piercing (s.th., with a spear)’, a value that may have developed from an earlier *‘throwing away’ along the lines described below under
†NǦL_
15.
▪
†NǦL_12 ‘to ill-treat’: no obvious cognates. – Etymology suggested by
EtymArab:
†[v
11] ‘to throw away, fling, strike off’ >
†[v
14] ‘to strike, beat, push, drive’ >
†[v
12] ‘to ill-treat’.
▪
†NǦL_13 ‘marcher d’un pas vigoureux’: no obvious cognates. – Etymology suggested by
EtymArab: value immediately dependent on
†[v
11] ‘to throw away, fling, strike off’, an activity that is accompanied by some violent movement or carried out with some vehemence.
▪
†NǦL_14 ‘to strike, beat, push, drive’: ‘to strike’ is enumerated in
BDB1906 alongside with ‘to split, pierce’ (cf. next item, [v
15]) as a basic value of the »very infrequent« Ar vb.
naǧala. It is perh. identical also with
†[v
11] ‘to throw away, fling, strike off (with a foot or leg, e.g., pebbles)’. – Etymology suggested by
EtymArab: value immediately dependent on, or perh. even identical with,
†[v
11] ‘to throw away, fling, strike off’, as this latter seems to be carried out with the aim of driving s.o./s.th. away or keeping s.o./s.th. off; so there is some violence/vehemence involved, as in
†[v
13].
▪
†NǦL_15 ‘to split, pierce (s.th.,
bi‑ with a spear)’: This value is given by
BDB1906 as the basic meaning of Ar
naǧala. Although the vb. is said to be “very infrequent” in Ar, the authors consider it as one possible source of [v
4] Ar
minǧal ‘sickle’ (which many regard as a loanword however; see above, NǦL_4). Orel&Stolbova1994 would derive
minǧal from a Sem vb. *
n˅gil‑ ‘to mow, reap’, the assumed origin of which – AfrAs *
n˅gil‑ ‘to cut’ – would be very similar to the idea of Ar ‘to split, pierce’. However that may be, the ‘splitting, piercing’ of
†[v
15] is very likely related to [v
2] ‘wide (eyes); open, gaping wound; earth opened to plant s.th.’,
†[v
16] ‘outflowing water’,
†[v
18] ‘to appear, emanate; to disclose, manifest’, and prob. also
†[v
19] ‘broad path’. – Etymology suggested by
EtymArab: Value [v15] may be immediately dependent on
†[v
11] ‘to throw away (pebbles, a spear, etc.)’, as esp. the spear that is thrown away may cause a
†[v15] ‘splitting, piercing’ in the person or object hit by it. In its turn, this ‘splitting, piercing’ can be the cause of the ‘wide opening, gaping’ of [v
2] that is an important semantic node from which many other values developed. If the ‘splitting, piercing’ is not produced in a body but in the soil, the instrument that does so and that would be called
minǧal would be a ‘pickaxe, hoe, mattock’, a value not attested in Sem but perh. realized in the stage of semantic development where the word went into Grk and Copt (see discussion on NǦL_
4, above).
▪
†NǦL_16 ‘(n.) outflowing water, spring; (vb.)
1 to abound with springs of water;
2 to become swampy (ground)’: this value corresponds nicely to Ǧabal2012’s bi-cons. Ar root nucleus ↗*
NǦ‑ ‘break through, eruption of s.th. thick but not solid from inside’, which is similar to Ehret1995’s pre-protSem *
NG ‘to seep, ooze’ (↗*
NǦ‑_2), reconstructed on the basis of similarities between
†[v
16] and Ar
†naǧǧa ‘to bleed, suppurate’,
†naǧaḫa ‘to bring wind and rain’, ↗
naǧida ‘to drip with perspiration’,
†naǧafa ‘to milk (a sheep) well’, and
†naǧw ‘pouring cloud’. Together with Cush *
ʔangʷ‑/
ʔungʷ‑ ‘breast’ (from secreting of milk by the breast) and perh. Eg
ngsgs ‘to overflow’, the author suggests a common origin in a hypothetical AfrAs *
‑nugʷ‑ ‘to seep’. – Given that Ehret’s reconstruction beyond the Ar/pre-protSem stage cannot build on strong evidence, one could also think of a semantic development along the following line (etymology suggested by
EtymArab):
†[v
11] ‘to throw away, fling, strike off (a spear, etc.)’ > thereby
†[v
15] ‘split, pierce (s.th.)’ and cause a [v
2] ‘wide opening’ >
†[v
16] ‘opening through which water flows out, spring’.
▪
†NǦL_17 ‘to combat, fight | combattre, en venir aux mains les uns avec les autres’: no immediate cognates in Sem. – Etymology suggested by
EtymArab: †[v
11] ‘to throw away, fling, strike off (a spear, etc.)’ >
†[v
15] ‘to split, pierce (s.th., with a spear)’ > thereby cause a [v
2] ‘wide opening through which bursts out what is inside’ >
†[v
17] ‘to combat, fight’ (= *‘to “explode, erupt”, burst out into the enemy’). Alternatively, one could think of a “short cut”:
†[v
11] ‘to throw away, fling, strike off’ > thereby
†[v
14] ‘to beat, push, hit’ > (s.o. with a spear, etc.) >
†[v
17] ‘to combat, fight’.
▪
†NǦL_18 ‘hervorbringen, ans Licht ziehen, bekannt machen | tirer, extraire ou emmener | to disclose, manifest (vb. I); to show o.s., appear (vb. VIII), ‘pousser de dessous terre, paraître à la surface du sol (vb. X)’: Semantic similarity between
†NǦL_18 and the N-stem (vb. VII) of ǦLW/Y,
ĭnǧalà, ‘to reveal itself, be disclosed, become manifest’, is undeniable, so that a dependence of the former on the latter, or an overlapping, should not be too quickly rejected as unlikely or impossible. (One will have to find out whether there are perh. more such cases where vb.s with R₁=N show semantic resemblance/overlapping with form VII of defective or geminated vb.s.). For the time being, it seems safer to assume kinship with other items from NǦL, esp.
†[v
16], with which
†[v
18] shares the idea of s.th. emerging from inside, hence also Ǧabal2012’s *‘break through, eruption of s.th. thick but not solid from inside’. – Accordingly,
EtymArab suggests the following etymology:
†[v
11] ‘to throw away, fling, strike off (a spear, etc.)’ >
†[v
15] ‘to split, pierce (s.th., with a spear)’ > thereby cause a [v
2] ‘wide opening through which bursts out what is inside’ >
†[v
18] ‘to show o.s., appear’.
▪
†NǦL_19 ‘broad path’: no obvious cognates, and difficult to connect even inside the Ar root. But
if this value is akin to the others above, then it may have developed along the following line (etymology suggested by
EtymArab):
†[v
11] ‘to throw away (a spear, etc.), fling, strike off’ >
†[v
15] ‘to split, pierce (s.th., with a spear)’ > i.e., cause a
†[v
2] ‘wide opening’ >
†[v
19] ‘broad path’ (a path that ‘opens up’ in front of you).
EtymArab
ʔ
