Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ The value ‘secret, to hide’ of √SRː (SRR) seems to be dependent on ‘navel’ (↗surraẗ, from ↗surr ‘umbilical cord’), either directly (the navel being interpreted as a pudendum or s.th. secret), or via the sense of ‘centre, middle’ and, hence, ‘innermost’ part of s.th., that surraẗ also can take (and thereby itself become equivalent to sirr which in its turn can signify the ‘heart, inmost’).
▪ Extra-Ar evidence that could help sort things out is scarce and perh. irrelevant, as the “cognates” suggested by some scholars probably aren’t genuine cognates. Thus neither the Ug srr (Gt) ‘to confide (?)’ nor Ug sr ‘false’ (Akk sarru), mentioned by Tropper2008, nor Ug šrr ‘in secret’ (Zammit2002) seem to be reliable enough to build a well-founded hypothesis on. Dillmann1865: 384 suggested to assume a kinship betw. Ar sārra, vb. III, ‘to confide a secret’, and Gz sawwara, śawwara ‘to hide, conceal, cover over, shield, screen, protect’, səwwər, səwwur ‘hidden, concealed, covered, secret, obscure’, (pl.) səwwərāt ‘mysteries’ (values given in Leslau2006-CDG; cf. also Aram swyr ‘hide’ and, ultimately, perh. also the complex treated under Ar ↗sūr ‘wall’). But this, too, is highly speculative.
▪ Possibly from sirr is derived ↗surriyyaẗ ‘concubine’, as *‘woman whom a man may show his “secret”, i.e., his penis, or who shows a man her pudenda, or whose existence a man tends to conceal, i.e., keep as a secret, from his wife’. In line with this are attestations of sirr in ClassAr as ^†‘penis, vulva’, then also ^†‘concubitus, cohabitation’ as well as ^†‘marriage’ and ^†‘adultery, fornication’ (see section HIST, below). Where the ‘secret’ has no sexual connotation it can take the meaning of *‘innermost, best part, essence’ and then signify, for instance, the ^†‘marrow, pure\choice\best part of s.th.’, or the ^†‘inmost = best\most fruitful part (of a valley, etc.)’, hence also ‘goodness, excellence’ in general.
▪ From ‘to let into a secret, confide s.th. to s.o.’, the meaning ‘to reveal (a secret)’ has developed, giving rise to counting sarra among the so-called ʔaḍdād, i.e., words that can take contradictory meanings—sometimes sparking hermeneutical controversies about the meaning of certain Qur’anic passages (see ↗surriyyaẗ).

hist

▪ For sirr, Kazimirski1860 and Lane iv (1872) have also the values (now obsolete):

^†‘penis, vulva, external portion of the organs of generation’, hence the expr. ĭltaqà ’l-sirrān ‘the two pudenda met’; hence also
^†‘concubitus | cohabitation avec une femme; hence also marriage’, cf. expr. wāʕadahā sirran ‘he promised her marriage, she promising him the same’; but also ^†‘adultery, fornication’ (cf. walad al-sirr ‘bastard’)
^†‘commencement\first night of the lunar month’, or its ‘middle’, e.g., sirr al-šahr / al-layl ‘the middle of the month / the night’;
^†‘marrow, pure\choice\best part of s.th.’;
^†‘the low\depressed part of a valley, its best\most fruitful part, or its middle’; cf. also ʔarḍ^un sirr^un ‘fruitful\good land’, hence also ‘goodness; excellence’ in general

Moreover, there is ^†sarar ‘secret discourse, secret communication (betw. two persons or parties)’
▪ Due to the ambiguity in meaning of vb. IV, a controversy arouse around Q 10:54 (and 34:33) wa-ʔasarrū ’l-nadāmaẗa lammā raʔaw-u ’l-ʕaḏāba. While some interpreted this as ‘and they will be openly remorseful when they see the chastisement’, others read it as ‘▪ … secretly remorseful▪ …’

cogn

▪ ?Tropper2008: Ug sr** ‘falsch’, Akk sarru.
▪ Tropper2008: Ug srr (Gt) ‘anvertrauen (?)’, Ar srr III, IV ‘jdm e Geheimnis anvertrauen, heimlich mitteilen’.
▪ Zammit2002: cf. Ug šrr ‘in secret’.
▪ Leslau2006 (CDG): Gz sawwara, śawwara ‘to hide, conceal, cover over, shield, screen, protect’, səwwər, səwwur ‘hidden, concealed, covered, secret, obscure’, (pl.) səwwərāt ‘mysteries’. Cf. Aram swyr ‘hide’, (Dillmann 1865: 384 suggests) Ar sārra ‘to confide a secret’.

disc

▪ Kogan2015: 396-7 #12: »The only immediate cognate of protAram *šūr ‘wall’ is Ar ↗sūr with the same meaning. The Ar term has often been considered an Aramaism (Fraenkel 1886: 237-8), which becomes less evident in view of Sab ms₁wrt (pl.) ‘wall,’ h-s₁r ‘to build a wall’, Qat s₁wr ‘to build a wall around’ and Te sor ‘wall, partition wall’ (unless an Arabism). Hbr šūr, although probably autochthonous in such passages as Ps 18:30 = 2S 22:30 and Gn 49:22, is a rare poetic synonym of the standard Hbr terms for wall, such as ḳīr, ḥōmā and gādēr. No fully persuasive verbal origin for *šūr- is at hand, but an ultimate connection with Gz sawwara ‘to hide, conceal, shield, screen, protect’ (CDG 520, with cognates in other EthSem langs) and Mhr sər, Jib serr ‘to cover’ cannot be excluded (cf. Marrassini 1971:76-9)«.
▪ Nöldeke1904 counts sarra among the ʔaḍdād, meaning, allegedly, not only ‘to hide, conceal’ but also ‘to reveal’, developed from *‘to deal with the hidden in such a way that it is brought to light’. The two contrary significations are mentioned also in Lane iv (1872), following Zabīdī’s Tāǧ; however, Lane thinks that the attribution of the sense of ‘to reveal’ to sarra is due to a »mistranscription«, where it actually should be vb. IV, ʔasarra ‘to tell confidentially, confide (bi or h s.th. ʔilà to s.o.)’, hence ‘to reveal (s.th. to s.o.)’.

west

–

deriv

► sirran, adv., secretly, privately
► sirran wa-ʕalaniyyaẗan, adv., secretly and publicly
► sirr al-layl, n., watchword, password
► ʔasrār al-qurʔān, n.pl., the secret meaning of the Koran
► kātib al-sirr and kātim al-sirr, n., secretary
► kalimaẗ al-sirr, watchword, password
► bi-sirrikum or fī sirrikum, expr., to your health!, cheerio! skoal!
► fī sirrihī, adv., secretly, inwardly, in his heart
► ʔatʕaba sirrahū, vb. IV, to trouble [s.o.’s heart], worry, bother, harass s.o.
► ʔaǧrà sirran, vb. IV, to dispense a sacrament (Chr.)
► qaddasa ’llāhu sirrahū, expr., may God hallow his secret/heart/soul! (eulogy after the name of a deceased Muslim saint)

► sārra, vb. III, to confide a secret (-h to s.o.): assoc. | sārrahū fī ʔuḏnih, expr., to whisper in s.o.’s ear.
► ʔasarra, vb. IV, 1 ↗sarra; 2 to keep secret, hide, conceal, disguise (s.th.); to tell confidentially, confide (bi‑ or -h s.th. ʔilà to s.o.); to tell under one’s breath, whisper: denom. | ʔasarra fī ʔuḏnih, expr., to whisper in s.o.’s ear (s.th.).
► ĭstasarra, vb. X, 1 to try to hide; to hide, be hidden (ʕan from): conat.; 2 ↗surriyyaẗ

► ^BP#1848sirrī, adj., 1 secret; private; confidential; mysterious, cryptic; 2 sacramental (Chr.): nisba formation. | al-ʔamrāḍ al-sirriyyaẗ, n.pl., venereal diseases.
► ^BP#2744sirriyyaẗ, n.f., secret; secretiveness, secrecy: abstr. formation in iyyaẗ for abstract concepts.
► sarīraẗ, pl. sarāʔirᵘ, n.f., 1 secret; secret thought; 2 mind, heart, soul:… | ṣafāʔ al-sarīraẗ, n., clearness of conscience; ṭayyib al-sarīraẗ, adj., guileless, simplehearted.
► misarraẗ, pl. masārrᵘ, n.f., 1 speaking tube; 2 telephone: n.instr., cf. the old value ^†‘instrument in which one speaks secretly, like a roll, or scroll’ – Lane iv (1872): vn. I.
► mustasarr, n., place of concealment: n.loc.

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