Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ Perh. from Aram gīrā ‘lime’. – In contrast, Fraenkel mentions the traditional attribution to ^†ǧāra ‘to come to the boil, boil briskly’ as well as Pers gil ‘clay, mud’ as another option without confirming any of them. Klein is sure that Ar ǧīr is from Aram gīrā and that »[a]ll these words« go back to Akk kīru ‘chalkstone’ < Sum gir ‘id.’. However, these Akk and Sum words actually mean ‘kiln’ rather than ‘lime’ or ‘chalkstone’, and others (like already Zimmern1914) are much more reluctant to accept such an etymology; it is not found in DRS, nor with Dolgopolsky.

hist

▪ …

cogn

▪ DRS 2 (1994)#GYR-1: Hbr gīr, BiblAram JudPal gīrā, Ar ǧīr ‘chaux’, SAr gyr ‘chaux’; ‘crépir’; Gz gayyara ‘enduire de chaux’
▪ Klein1987: Hbr gīr ‘lime; (nHbr) chalk’, BiblAram gīrā ‘plaster’, JudAram gīrā ‘lime’, Syr gīrā ‘birdlime’, SAr gyr ‘lime’, Te gerger ‘chalkstone’.

disc

▪ Fraenkel1886 mentions that Ar ǧayyār and ǧīr traditionally are derived from ^†ǧāra ‘aufkochen, aufwallen’ (to come to the boil, boil briskly), »where prob. also GRR ‘to excite’ belongs«. Furthermore, he mentions Pers gil ‘clay, mud’ as another possibility but is eager to add that he would not want to decide whether or not the word might be related to it.
▪ Klein1987 (s.v. Hbr gîr) is convinced that »[a]ll these words [those he gives as cognates] are ultimately borrowed from Akk kīru ‘chalkstone’,¹ which itself is a loan word from Sum gir (of same meaning)«.² . In contrast, Zimmern1914 formulated more cautiously: Given that Akk kīru ‘oven’ (cf. Ar ↗Ar kūr, kīr) was particularly used as the shipper’s kiln, it might not be impossible (»wäre es nicht unmöglich«) that it was at the origin of Syr JudAram qīrā ‘asphalt, bitumen’ (whence Ar ↗qīr, ↗qār ‘tar, pitch’), and »then probably [!] also« Aram gīr, gīrā ‘lime’ (which »probably« [!] gave lHbr gîr, Ar ǧayyār, ǧīr, SAr gyr ‘lime’, as well as Gz gayyara ‘to limewash’).

1. CAD has kīru (kēru) ‘kiln (for lime and bitumen)’. 2. Halloran3.0: gir₄, kir₁₃ ‘kiln (for lime and bitumen); oven’.

west

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deriv

► ǧīrī, adj., calcareous, lime (adj.): nsb-formation.
► ǧayyār, n., unslaked lime: looks as if it were formed from ǧīr after a FaʕʕāL pattern, but is actually an independent loan, prob. from the same or a similar Aram source as ǧīr.
► ǧayyāraẗ, n.f., limekiln: quasi-PA f., from ǧīr after the FaʕʕāLaẗ pattern.

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