Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ Kogan2011: It seems that the word for ‘man, human being; men, mankind’ is akin to bašaraẗ ‘skin’ and ultimately goes back to protWSem *baśar‑ ‘skin, flesh, meat’. The original sense then would be *‘the being(s) with skin/flesh’.

hist

▪ eC7 Q

cogn

DRS 2 (1994)#BŚR-2: Ug bšr, Hbr baśār ‘chair’; Pun bšr ‘enfant, descendant’; JP bᵉśar, bᵉsar, biśrā, bisrā, Syr besrā, Mand bisra, nSyr bisra, pisra ‘chair’; Ar bašar ‘peau’, SAr bśr ‘peau’ ou ‘chair’, Gz bāsor, Har Gur bäsär ‘chair’; Ar bašara ‘racler (une peau)’; ? Te bašur ‘selle de mariée’. – Ar bašara ‘avoir commerce charnel avec’, ‘avoir un contact immédiat avec, entreprendre personnellement, surveiller de près (un travail)’; ? nSyr *mbašir ‘savoir faire, se tirer d’affaire, être habile’, bašrānā ‘habile’.

disc

▪ The Sem cognates suggest that bašar ‘man, mankind’ and bašaraẗ ‘skin’ are semantically related. Lane I 1863 gives the opinion of some lexicographers that bašar is »a secondary application of the word […], i.e., this signification is tropical; or, as some say, the word is so much used in this sense as to be, so used, conventionally regarded as proper; the sense not depending upon its having another word connected with it: but […] by the generality of authors, this signification is given as proper. […] Some say that a human being is thus called because his bašaraẗ [‘skin’] is bare of hair and of wool« (s.v. bašar). Furthermore, he mentions that Arab lexicographers suggest a connexion between ‘good news’ (bšr_1) and ‘skin’ (bšr_2) in that they interpret the vb. bašira a / bašara i as »He became changed in his bašaraẗ (or ‘complexion’) by the annunciation of an event […] and hence, he rejoiced […]« (op.cit., s.v. bšr 1.).
▪ DRS 2 (1994)#BŚR-2: From Sem *baśar‑ ‘skin, flesh’.

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deriv

► ^BP#1120bašarī, adj., human: nsb-adj; n., human being: nominalized nsb-adj. – See also ↗bšr_2.
► ^BP#2953bašariyyaẗ, n., humankind, human race: n.abstr. in ‑iyyaẗ.

For the semantic complexes ‘scrape, peel; skin’ (bašaraẗ, mibšaraẗ, mabšūr) as well as ‘pursuit, practice’ and ‘directness, immediateness’ (bāšara, mubāšaraẗ, mubāšir) ↗BŠR_2.

For all items connected to the value ‘(to announce) good news’ ↗BŠR_1.

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