Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ According to EALL (Shahîd, “Latin Loanwords”), the word is one of the loans from Latin that owe their existence to the ‎‎"strong Roman military and administrative presence in the region".
▪ But see below, section DISC.
▪ …

hist

▪ …

cogn

▪ DRS 2 (1994) #BRD-1-5 […]. -6 Aram bʔrwdʔ, byrydʔ ‘cheval de poste’; Ar barīd ‘cheval ou chameau de poste, courrier’; SAr brdn ‘émissaire, ambassadeur’. -7-10 […].
▪ …

disc

▪ EALL ‎‎(Shahîd, “Latin Loanwords”): from Lat veredus ‘thill horse’; from this, the meaning developed, ‎in Ar, into ‘post horse; courier; stage’ and today's ‘mail’.
▪ Cf., however, Rolland2014a/2022: For Kazimirski, the word is Pers.¹ But its origin is still being discussed.² Traditionally, it was regarded to go back to Pers burīdah dum ‘with shortened tail’,³ a term used for postal mules and, by extension, messengers and the postal system. But this etymology is prob. more popular than learned. Some, quoted by Nourai,⁴ would derive the term from Phlv burtan ‘emporter’, related to Av bar ‘porter, monter à cheval’, IE *bʰer ‘porter’. For Rajki, it is via ByzGrk ϐέρεδος béredos from lLat veredus ‘postal horse’, accord. to Ernout and Meillet borrowed from gaulois, IE *reidʰ- ‘to ride’. It may be the other way round, however. The existence of names for equids coined from √BRD/PRD in several Sem languages (Hbr pirdah ‘mule’, Akk perdum ‘[still unidentified equid]’⁵ ), associated with oPers pirradaziš ‘service (de transport) rapide’ in the Persepolis tablets points, if not to a Sem but at least to a Mesopotamian origin of both, barīd and Lat veredus. But there remain many missing links that would bridge the huge gap in time and space separating the Mesopotamian and the Ar and Lat words.
▪ …

1. BK1860 s.r. √BRD. 2. See, e.g., Adam J. Silverstein, “Postal Systems in the Premodern Islamic World”, CUP 2007: 29 with note 136 3. Lane i 1863 s.r. √BRD. 4. Ali Nourai, An Etymological Dictionary of Persian, English, and other Indo-European Languages. 5. Voir Cécile Michel, »The perdum-mule, a mount for distinguished persons in Mesopotamia during the first half of the second millennium BC«, 2002.

west

–

deriv

►al-barīd al-ǧawwī, n., air mail

►ʔabrada, vb. IV to send by mail, to mail (a letter)

►barīdī, 1 adj., postal; 2 n., a messenger, courier; b mailman

For other values attached to the root, cf. ↗bārūd (s.r. √BāRūD), ↗bard, ↗barad, ↗burd, ↗barada, ↗barūd, and ↗bardī, as well as, for the whole picture, root entry ↗√BRD.

Permanent link

http://www2.hf.uio.no/common/apps/permlink/permlink.php?app=polyglotta&context=record&uid=d79dbfbf-06ff-11ee-937a-005056a97067

Choose languages

Choose images, etc.

Choose languages

Choose display