Bibliotheca Polyglotta

Perhaps originally *‘to humiliate’ (by forcing into a subservient position, making to perform corvée, etc.?). If so, the vb. is akin to ↗saḫḫara ‘to subject, make subservient’ (perhaps from *‘to intimidate, silence from fear’) and may go back to a Sem *ŠḪR ‘to be(come) fearful, intimidated, stock-still’.

hist

▪ eC7 Q saḫira (to scorn, to ridicule) 49:11 lā yasḫar qawmun min qawmin ʕasā ʔan yakūnū ḫayran min-hum ‘no people should jeer at others, lest they be better than them’. – Cf. also siḫriyy (object of ridicule, laughing-stock) 38:63 ʔa-’ttaḫaḏnā-hum siḫriyyan ʔam zāġat ʕan-humu ’l-ʔabṣāru ‘Did we take them (wrongly) for a laughing-stock, or have our eyes missed them?’
▪

cogn

…

disc

▪ Accord. to Huehnergard2011, the vb. goes back to Sem *ŠḪR ‘to be(come) fearful, intimidated, stock-still’ (cf. Akk šuḫarruru ‘to become dazed, still, numb with fear; to abate, subside’).
▪ If Huehnergard is right, then the primary meaning of Ar saḫ˅ra is the one conserved in ↗saḫḫara ‘to subject, make subservient’ (< *‘to intimidate’, caus. of vb. I, *‘to be fearful, numb with fear’), and probably also in ↗^†saḫara ‘to have good wind (ship)’ (< *‘to make the wind subservient’, or *‘to obey to the wind’). ‘To jeer, scoff, ridicule’ would then be secondary, derived from ‘to make subservient’ (< *‘to look down at s.o., despise s.o., because he has been subjugated’, perhaps in the special sense of ‘forced into corvée, or compulsory labour’) or from *‘to intimidate’ (‘to jeer, scoff, ridicule’ < *‘to intimidate, make numb’ through mockery). In this case, however, the intransitivity of saḫira becomes problematic (the vb. is constructed with min or bi‑). Could it be denominative from one the many vn.s that may have come into Ar from another language, e.g. Syr? The Pael forms and vn.s in Syr that are cognate to ↗saḫḫara would support this assumption.
▪ Gabal2012 regards Ar √SḪR as an extension of a biconsonantal basis *SḪ- ‘to be soft, smooth’. He explains saḫara ‘to have a good wind’ as *‘to let o.s. be drawn smoothly, without resistance’, something that implies a certain ‘lightness, ease’ (ḫiffaẗ), which is also to be found in saḫara ‘to jeer, scoff, mock’, the latter actually meaning *‘to value lightly, disdain, look down upon, (hence also) not to take seriously’.
▪ For a discussion of the “root” as whole, see ↗SḪR.

west

▪ Engl mask, 1530s, from mFr masque ‘covering to hide or guard the face’ (16c.), from Ital maschera, from mLat masca ‘mask, specter, nightmare’, perhaps (though not positively proven) from Ar masḫaraẗ ‘buffoon, mockery’, from saḫira ‘to mock, ridicule’.¹ – From the n. mask also the vb. to mask ‘take part in a masquerade; to disguise’, as well as masked, masking, masking tape, etc. (EtymOnline).

1. Another etymology that has been suggested is that mFr masque is related to Prov mascarar, Cat mascarar, oFr mascurer ‘to black (the face)’, perhaps from a Germ source akin to Engl mesh (q.v.). But compare Occit mascara ‘to blacken, darken’, derived from mask‑ ‘black’, which is held to be from a pIE language, and oOccit masco ‘witch’, surviving in dialects; in Beziers it means ‘dark cloud before the rain comes’.

deriv

► tasaḫḫara, vb. V, to scoff, jeer, sneer: self-reflexive of caus. – For another meaning, see deriv. of ↗saḫḫara.

► suḫraẗ, n.f., laughingstock, target of ridicule: specialisation of vn. I. For another meaning, see ↗saḫḫara.
► suḫriyy, var. siḫriyy, n., laughingstock, target of ridicule: nominalized adj. or a vn. (of a rare type)? – For another meaning, see ↗saḫḫara.
► ^BP#3267suḫriyyaẗ, n.f., scorn, derision, mockery, irony: n.abstr. in ‑iyyaẗ; laughingstock, object of ridicule: specialisation of the preceding.
► masḫaraẗ, pl. ‑āt, masāḫirᵘ, object of ridicule, laughingstock: concretized vn. + ‑aẗ (n.un.?); ridiculous, droll, ludicrous: adjectivization; masquerade:.
► ^BP#3509sāḫir, adj., mocking, derisive; satirical: PA I.

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