Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ Etymology problematic (see below, section DISC), but perh. from CSem *g˅b(b)īn- ‘eyebrow, front’. Jeffery1938 considered it a borrowing from Aram gbynʔ (Syr gᵊbīnā) ‘brow, eyebrow’. In any case, these regions of the face show ‘wrinkles, furrows’ and are thus *‘contracting’ parts, showing wrinkles, and may thus have developed from the basic idea of a *‘shrinking together, forming a bumpy surface’, from a Sem *√GBN ‘to be curved, bowed, hunchback’ (SED I #67 Sem *gVb(V)b-, *gVb(b)-an- ‘hump, hunch’), itself prob. an extension in -N from the 2-rad. root nucleus ↗*ǦB- with the basic value ‘difference in altitude, elevation, level’.
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hist

▪ eC7 (‘temple, side of forehead’) Q 37:103 fa-lammā ʾaslamā wa-talla-hū li-l-ǧabīni ‘Then, when they had both surrendered (to Allah), and he had flung him down upon his face’

cogn

▪ DRS #GBN-1 Hbr gibbēn ‘bossu’, *gabnōn ‘sommet, crête (de montagne)’, JP gᵊbintā, Syr gibnā ‘bosse’, JP Syr gᵊbīn ‘bossu’, Mand gabnia ‘sommets’; Gz gʷəbən, gʷəbər ‘bossu’; ? Ar ǧabbān ‘terrain élevé de forme plate mais où on trouve des monticules’. -2 PhlvAram gbyn, JP Syr gᵊbīnā, Mand gbina, nSyr (aysor) gnīvä ‘sourcil’, Ar ǧabīn ‘côté du front, front, tempe’; Te gäbäna ‘front’. -3 Ar ǧabuna, ǧabana ‘être lâche, poltron’. -4 Akk gubnat-, Hbr gᵊbīnā; PhlvAram gbnth, JP gubnā, Syr gᵊbettā (pl. gubnē), nAram(W) gbečča, Ar ǧubn, ǧubun(n) , Gz g(ʷ)əbnat ‘fromage’; Syr gᵊban ‘contracter, coaguler’. -5 […].
▪ SED I #69 : (?) Hbr gibbēn ‘one having defective eyebrow’; EmpAram gbyn ‘forehead’, JudAram gᵊbīnā ‘eyebrow, eyelash’, gbyn ‘eyebrow’, Syr gᵊbīnā ‘supercilia; vertex, cacumen’, gᵊbīnūtā ‘supercilia’, Mnd gbina, gbana ‘brow, eyebrow, eyelash’, mMnd gᵊḇīna ‘brow’, nAss gnīvä ‘eyebrow’ (metath.), Zkh gubʔēna ‘forehead’; Ar ǧabīn ‘front’, al-ǧabīnāni (du.) ‘les deux extremites du front, les deux parties comprises entre les sourcils et les cheveux’
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disc

▪ SED I #69 : Problematic. CSem *g˅b(b)īn- ‘eyebrow, front’, if Hbr gibbīn is related and Ar ǧabīn is not an Aram (Syr?) borrowing. – Related to *gabb(-at)- ‘eyebrow, eye-pit, front’ (SED I #66) (cf. Ar ↗ǧubb). – Cf. Ug /gabīnu/ ‘hillock (?)’, prob. derived with a feasible meaning shift. – Te ǧäbäna ‘forehead’ prob. an Arabism.
▪ Jeffery1938: »The sole occurrence of the word is in the story of Abraham preparing to sacrifice his son, when he laid him down on his forehead. The exegetes got the meaning right, but neither they nor the Lexicons have any satisfactory explanation of the origin of the word from a root ǦBN. / Barth has suggested an Aram origin. [Aram] gbynʔ means ‘brow, eyebrow’ and is fairly common in the Rabbinic writings. Similarly [Syr] gbynʔ is ‘eyebrow’ and a commonly used word. From either of these it may have been an early borrowing into Ar.«
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west

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deriv

►min ǧabīnī, adv., alone;
►ʕalà ǧabīn al-samāʔ, adv., in the sky

►ǧabīnī, adj., frontal: nsb-adj.

For other values attached to the root, cf. ↗¹ǧubn, ↗²ǧubn, and ↗ǧabbānaẗ as well as, for the overall picture, root entry ↗√ǦBN.

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