▪ Albright1927:224 thinks that the »original sense [of
ḥāra,
yaḥūru ] was probably ‘to turn’, whence ‘turn away, depart’ and ‘return’.« In contrast, Jabal2012 (I:403) suggests ‘hollowness together with roundness’ as the primary meaning of the root as a whole, regarding ‘to (re)turn’ as a secondary development (hollow, round > to make a circle, a turn > to return). Should there be some truth to this, then there might be a relation between this notion and Hbr
ḥōr,
ḥôr [√ḥr(r)] ‘hole’ (cf. ↗
Ḥawrān, perhaps also ↗
maḥār). Cohen1969, in his turn, relates
ḥāra not only to other ḤWR items, but also to ↗
rāḥa (√RWḤ), which fits very well, in terms of semantics, with the EthSem cognates of
ḥāra, e.g. Gz
ḥora ‘to go, depart’. From a merely semantic perspective, also his juxtaposition of
ḥāra (and
rāḥa) with Akk
(w)âru ‘to go, advance (against s.o.), oppose, attack’and
arāḫu ‘to hasten, hurry’as well as Hbr
ʔāraḥ ‘to wander, journey, go’,
ʔoraḥ ‘way, path’ seems not unplausible. But would that be possible phonologically?
▪ Evidence outside Sem does not bring much light into the question of the origin of
ḥāra ‘to (re)turn’. Cohen1969 suggests parallels in Eg
ḥry [ThLAeg:
ḥrj ] ‘to be far, leave, distance o.s.’ (mentioned also in
DRS as suggested by Faulkner and Albright) and
ḥr.t ‘way, path, slope’, as well as in Bed and Ag Bil vb.s meaning ‘to walk, travel, go’ or ‘to run’. (Possible cognates in Berb Tua are mentioned but disqualified as »doubtful«.) According to
DRS (#ḤWR-3), Faulkner and Müller see a possible connection also with Eg
ḥn ‘to advance rapidly, march quickly’ [also: ‘to retreat’, ThLAeg]. But these are all highly speculative.
▪ For the relation between [v1] ‘to (re)turn’ and [v2] ‘to recede, decrease’, cf. the ClassAr dictionaries, quoted in Lane, saying »(vn.
ḥawr,
ḥūr) he returned from a good state to a bad; you say,
ḥāra baʕda mā kāna […], he returned from a good state after he had been in that state, or:
ḥāra baʕda mā kāra […], he became in a state of defectiveness after he had been in a state of redundance; or it is from [the vb. I]
ḥāra (vn.
ḥawr), he untwisted (his turban); and means: he became in a bad state of affairs after he had been in a good state;
ḥāra wa-bāra, he became in a defective and bad state. (vn.
ḥawr,
ḥūr,
maḥāraẗ,
maḥār) It decreased, became defective, deficient; he perished, or died; he/it became changed from one state, or condition, into another; it became converted into another thing.« Convincing? –
DRS (#ḤWR-11) distinguishes the notion of
†‘damage, mishap, malheur’ (
ḥūr), which reminds of ‘to perish, die’, just mentioned in the quotation from Lane’s dictionary, as a value in its own right, without cognates.
1
– The fact that Ar ↗
ḫāra (√ḪWR) means ‘to decline in force or vigour, grow weak, dwindle’, makes one suspect an overlapping of this item with, influence on, or even contamination of,
ḥāra in the sense of ‘to recede’, although this seems phonologically unlikely.
▪ ClassAr dictionaries often treat
ḥawwara, vb. II, ‘to roll out (dough); to change, modify’ as causative formations from ‘to (re)turn’,
2
explaining the value ‘to roll out (dough)’ as *‘to make the instrument called
miḥwar turn and return over a piece of dough’ (and in this way flatten it and roll it out) and ‘to change, modify’ as *‘to make s.th. return (in a condition or shape that is different from the one it was in, or had, when it was sent out, or left)’. The n.instr.
miḥwar is interpreted as *‘the point around which s.th. turns’ (> ‘axis, crucial point’) and, in the context of bakery, as the tool that is *‘turned over’ the dough in order to roll it out.
DRS seems to doubt in these explanations and therefore groups
miḥwar and
ḥawwara as a value in its own right. See ↗
miḥwar.
▪ ClassAr dictionaries connect also the vb. III
ḥāwara ‘to talk, converse, have a dialogue’ [like vb. IV
ʔaḥāra (ǧawāban) ‘to return (an answer), reply’] with vb. I
ḥāra ‘to (re)turn’. Cf. also ClassAr
†ḥawīr,
ḥawīraẗ (and several variants) ‘answer, reply’. Again,
DRS is sceptical about this interpretation and groups the corresponding items as a value distinct from ‘to return’. See ↗
ḥāwara.
▪ Ar
ḥāraẗ ‘quarter; lane, side street’ is often (as also in
DRS) seen as belonging to ‘to (re)turn’. The exact semantic relation however remains unexplained ¬– a
ḥāraẗ being a kind of enclosure with a dead end at which one has to turn, or from which one returns? – If ‘to (re)turn’ is (also) related to ‘depth, bottom’ (see above) one could also think of the dead end of a
ḥāraẗ being likened to the bottom of a cistern. All doubtful and speculative. –
ḥāraẗ may even have nothing to do with the root ḤWR at all but, rather, with ↗ḤYR or, via the latter (and Aram), with ↗ḤḌR. See DISC in entry ↗
ḥāraẗ.
▪
DRS makes
maḥār ‘oysters’ an entry in its own right. Some ClassAr lexicographers, however, say that the oyster is called
maḥār after the spiral shape of it its shell whose windings *‘turn’ around a centre, or *‘return’ to where they started;
maḥār, after all, is also the n.loc. of
ḥāra meaning
†‘place in which a return is made (to the point of commencement)’ (Lane). (For others, oysters are *‘the hollow ones’, those having a ‘cavity’, ↗
Ḥawrān.) For discussion, see ↗
maḥār.
▪
ḥawāriyy ‘apostle’ is grouped together with
ḥāra ‘to (re)turn’ in
DRS and many other places [in ClassAr dictionaries often interpreted as *‘s.o. who returns (after having been sent out with a message), sometimes also as *‘s.o. who discusses, or is in dialogue, with the people’], although it is, with all probability, not directly derived from ‘to (re)turn’ but borrowed from the Gz word for ‘apostle’, which is from Gz ḥ ‘to go’. For details cf. entry ↗
ḥawāriyy.
▪
ḥūr, the ‘virgins of Paradise’, are usually regarded to be a pl. of
ḥawrāʔᵘ, f. of
ʔaḥwarᵘ ‘having eyes with a marked contrast between black and white’ (↗
ḥawar). In ClassAr, there are however also words like
†ḥawāriyyaẗ (var.
ḥawarwaraẗ, and
ḥawrāʔᵘ !), pl.
āt, meaning ‘women inhabitants of regions, districts, or tracts, of cities, towns, or villages, and of cultivated land’ (who use to have a fair, ‘white’ complexion), so that it does not seem impossible to imagine the name for the virgins to derive from the notion of ‘settling down’ as it appears in SAr
ḥwr ‘to settle (tr. and intr.) in (a town); resident, inhabitant (of a town)’, which probably is akin to Ar ↗
ḥāraẗ ‘quarter, lane (of a town, village)’. – For a Pers etymology, cf. entry ↗
ḥūriyyaẗ.
▪ While ‘having a white skin’ would thus be a function of ‘to settle down’ (↗
ḥāraẗ), Ǧabal2012 (I: 404) thinks that the value ‘white’ (↗
ḥawar) depends on ‘to decrease’ [< ‘to turn (into s.th. worse)’], as whiteness is what »appears on the uncovering of s.th. after it had disappeared from the surface« (
yataʔattà min al-inkišāf baʕd al-intiqāṣ min al-ẓāhir), an explanation that seems rather forced but, on a closer look, may have a point.
EtymArab
ʔ
