Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ If semantics within the Sem root √ʔMR developed along the line sketched and discussed s.v.↗√ʔMR (section CONC), namely *(? Nostr *‘morning, daylight’ × *‘to burn (intr.); to shine, be bright; dawn’ >) Sem ‘to be visible, observable; fact, issue, matter, affair > to see, take notice of s.th. (that is visible or comes into sight, a fact, an issue, etc.) > to indicate, show, demonstrate, point to s.th. (a thing, matter, case, etc.) > to say > to command’, then Ar ʔamāraẗ ‘sign, token, mark, etc.’ and items with related meaning reflect one of the earliest stages of a long semantic history. To the same group seem to belong ʔamr ‘matter, affair, issue, etc.’ (↗²ʔamr) and ʔamr in the (probably borrowed) Qur’ānic sense of ‘revelation’ (³ʔamr – see below, section DISC).
▪ ….

hist

▪ Cf. also the ClassAr ^†ʔamaraẗ or ʔamār(aẗ) ‘heap of stones set up in order that one may be directed thereby to the right way, sign, mark by which s.th. is known’ (Lane).
▪ …

cogn

▪ DRS 1 (1994) #ʔMR‑ 1 Ar ʔamara ‘ordonner’; SAr ʔmr ‘ordonner, manifester’; Soq ʕemor, Śḥr ʕoñr, Mhr amor ‘dire’; EpigrAram ʔmr, JP ʔāmar, Syr ʔemar, Mand amar ‘dire, parler, ordonner’; Ya ʔmrh ‘ordre(?)’; Phoen Pun Moab EpigrHbr ʔmr, Hbr ʔāmar ‘dire’; Ug ʔamr ‘souhait, parole(?)’. – Akk amāru ‘voir, regarder’; Ug ʔamr ‘être visible, voir’; Ar taʔammala ‘examiner’; Gz ʔammara ‘montrer, indiquer’; təʔmərt ‘signe’; ʔəm(m)ur ‘clair, bien connu’; Tña ʔamära ‘savoir’; Te ʔammärä ‘être clair’; ʔamir ‘connaissance’; Amh ʔamro ‘raison, intelligence’; təmərt ‘signe, marque, science’. – Hbr ʔāmir ‘sommet d’arbre ou montagne’; tīmārā ‘colonne pilier’, Ar ʔamāraẗ ‘signe, indice, repère’, tāmūr(aẗ) ‘tour, tourelles’; ?Amh ʔamärä ‘être beau, plaisant, aimable’. -2-4. -5 Ar ʔamira ‘être nombreux, abondant, croître’. -6-15 […].
▪ ↗ʔamara.
▪ …

disc

▪ In an attempt to explain some values attached to Hbr ʔMR items, such as ʔāmîr ‘top, summit’ and tîmārāʰ ‘column’, Barth1902 took as evident and sufficiently proven that one has to assume a homonymous Sem root √ʔMR meaning *‘to be high’ alongside ʔMR ‘to see > say > command’ (1902: 5-6). He saw reflexes of this *‘to be high’ also in ^†ʔamaraẗ~ʔamār(aẗ) ‘(high) heap of stones’ as well as in ^†ʔamira ‘to be plentiful, many’ and ^†ʔimr ‘serious, painful, very difficult (affair)’ (cf. also BAH2008 ‘to afflict’). His theory comes close to others that derive Ar ^†tuʔmur ‘sign, mark’ from the root √TMR, particularly ↗tamr ‘date palm’, sharing with the latter the notion of ‘altitude’. (On Hbr tîmārāʰ ‘column’, DRS thinks it may be from ‘to be visible, to see’, but also adds: »Il n’est pas exclu cependant que nous ayons affaire à des racines différentes, v.s. TMR.«) Accordingly, also ↗ʔamīr, usually interpreted as *‘person who commands, gives orders’ (< ↗ʔamara ‘to command’) is thought by some to have developed from an original *‘person of high standing’, or *‘person excelling among the people, being more visible than others’. However, both ‘palm tree’ and ‘s.th. high’ are at the same time s.th. visible, observable from afar and/or attracting attention, so that *‘altitude’ and ‘palm tree’ are not really necessary to explain the semantic variety in this group.
▪ ʔamāraẗ seems to be akin to the obsol. ^†tuʔmūr ‘sign, mark, token (on the wayside)’ which Barth1894: 300 analyzed as formed after the nominal pattern taFʕūL, thought to be an extension formed on the basis of the “transitive infinitive [protSem *]qŭtûl”, exhibiting the same transitivity. He thinks Ar taʔmūr and (with vowel assimilation) tuʔmūr are derived from √ʔMR in the sense of ‘to know’, giving taʔmūr ‘knowledge, to get to know’ and tuʔmūr (‘recognition’ =) ‘sign, mark, token (on the wayside)’.
▪ The Qur’anic ʔamr meaning ‘revelation’ may belong together with ʔamāraẗ etc., either directly or as a borrowing from Aram, as suggested by Jeffery1938: »In the two senses (i) ‘command’ or ‘decree¬’ [↗ʔamara], (ii) ‘matter’, ‘affair’ [↗²ʔamr], it is a genuine Ar word, and commonly used in the Qurʔān. – In its use in connection with the Qurʔānic doctrine of revelation, however, it would seem to represent the Aram מימרא (Rudolph, Abhängigkeit, 41; Horovitz, JPN, 188; Fischer, Glossar, Nachtrag to 86; Ahrens, Christliches, 26; Muḥammad, 134). The whole conception seems to have been strongly influenced by the Christian Logos doctrine,¹ though the word would seem to have arisen from the Targumic use of מימרא.«)]
▪ To the same complex of ‘visibility’ and/or ‘pointing to, indicating s.th.’ belongs prob. also ↗taʔammala ‘to observe’, (with assumed sound shift *r > l) from *taʔammara ‘to take s.th. as an indicator\sign for o.s.’.
▪ …

1. Grimme, System, 50 ff.

west

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deriv

For other values attached to the root, cf. ↗ʔamara, ↗ʔamr, ↗ʔimmar, ↗ʔamīr, ↗(ʔa)mīrī, ↗taʔmūr, ↗muʔāmaraẗ, ↗ĭstiʔmāraẗ, ↗muʔtamar, as well as, for the whole picture, ↗√ʔMR.

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