Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ ‘Blue’ does not belong to the system of basic colour designations reconstructed (acc. to Kogan2011) by Bulakh for Sem (white ↗LBN, black ↗ẒLM, red ↗ʔDM, yellow-green ↗WRQ).
▪ BAH2008: »The term ʔazraq, which is usually translated as ‘blue’, in fact covers a range of colours in Ar including grey, green, and white and also means purity of water.«
▪ Fischer1965, 47 ff.: The original meaning of the adj. is ‘iridescent, shimmering, glittering, flashing’ (schillernd, schimmernd, glitzernd, blinkend, said of water, eyes of birds, metallic arrowheads,…), cf. also ^†ʔazraqī ‘(a certain type of) falcon’ (so called because of the iridescence of the bird’s eyes), or ^†zaraq ‘blindness’ (so called after the iridescence of blind people’s eyes); cf. ZRQ_3 and ZRQ_6 in “root” entry ↗ZRQ.
▪ Given the original value just mentioned, a relation between this ‘iridescence, shimmering, glittering’ and the semantic complex treated s.v. ↗zaraqa does not seem too unlikely: the iridescence of a water surface, of eyes, or of metallic arrowheads was perh. perceived as a kind of ‘sprinkling’ of light, or ‘throwing/hurling’ and ‘hitting’ the observer by the beams/flashes of light emitted by the glittering object. The value could thus be seen as having emerged from a figurative use of ↗zaraqa ‘to throw, hurl’ (ZRQ_2), which in itself is based on zaraqa ‘to spill, disperse’ (esp. excrements, said of birds = ZRQ_1). – Cf. also DISC in “root” entry ↗ZRQ.
▪ For suggestions on an AfrAs dimension in the etymology of zaraqa or its composition of a 2-cons. root nucleus + extension in *‑ḳ (Ar ‑q) cf. ↗ZRQ and ↗*ZR-.

hist

▪ eC7 [blue, grey, green, white-eyed (with terror); sightless] Q 20:102 yawma yunfaḫu fī ’l-ṣūri wa-naḥšuru ’l-muǧrimīna yawmaʔiḏin zurqan ‘the day the Trumpet will be sounded and We gather the sinful, sightless’

cogn

▪ DRS 8 (1999)#ZRQ-2 Akk zarrīq- ‘aux yeux iridescents’, Syr zārqā ‘bleu, vert bleu’, Mand zarūq, nSyr mazrič̣ ‘briller (yeux)’, Ar ʔazraqᵘ ‘bleu, pâle, livide; qui a les yeux bleu pâle, aveugle, brillant’, zarraqa ‘briller’, IrqAr zaraq, zarwaq ‘décorer, colorer’, Ḥass aẓṛag ‘pie (robe d’animaux), bariolé, bigarré’, ʕOmAr mzarga, Ḥrs mezarrget ‘chamelle rousse et noire’, Gz ʔazraq ‘bleu sombre’.
▪ Cf. perh. also the cognates of ↗zaraqa (if ʔazraqᵘ should be etymologically related to zaraqa – see above, section CONC, and ↗ZRQ, ↗zaraqa).

disc

See above, section CONC.

west

–

deriv

► al-zarqāʔᵘ, n.f., the blue sky, the blue
► al-māʔ al-zarqāʔᵘ (eg.), n.f., glaucoma (med.)

► zariqa, a (zaraq), vb. I, to be blue: prob. denom. (from zaraq or ʔazraqᵘ).
► ĭzraqqa, vb. IX, to be blue: form IX for colours and handicaps.

► zaraq, n., 1 blue, blueness, blue color; 2 glaucoma (med.): vn. I.
► zurqaẗ, n.f., 1 blue, blueness, blue color; 2 cyanosis (med.):…
► zurayq and ʔabū zurayq, n., jay (zool.): so called on account of the colour/iridescence of its eyes.
► ĭzriqāq, n., blueness, blue: vn IX. | dāʔ al-~, n., cyanosis.

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