Bibliotheca Polyglotta

1 to be or become general, universal, common, prevalent, comprehensive, all-embracing, to spread, prevail; 2 to comprise, include, embrace, encompass, pervade, extend, stretch, be spread, be diffused, be prevailing – WehrCowan1979.

conc

▪ The most adequate lemma under which the semantic field that this entry deals with should be treated, would have been ^†ʕamm ‘company of men, tribe, people’ rather than the (prob. denom.) vb. ʕamma. The reason why the data nevertheless is presented s.v. ʕamma is the fact that the more original noun has become obsolete in MSA and nouns with a similar value all are derived from the vb.
▪ ^†ʕamm ‘company, tribe, people’ goes back to CSem *ʕamm- ‘people’ which generally is believed to represent a semantic extension of the kinship term WSem *ʕamm- ‘grandfather, ancestor’ (> Ar ↗ʕamm ‘paternal uncle’).
▪ The idea, put forward in BDB1906, that ‘people’ prob. originally means *‘those united, connected, related’, would lead one to ask whether this “binding together” might be somehow related to the binding together of a ‘turban’, Ar ʕimāmaẗ, from the same (or a homonymous?) root ʕMM. But neither this word nor a vb. *ʕmm ‘to bind together’ are attested in Sem, except in the fig. sense of ‘to encompass, comprise, cover’, and this rarely outside Ar. – For further discussion, see probably ↗ʕMː (ʕMM) and ↗ʕimāmaẗ.
▪ For the theory that also ↗ʔummaẗ ‘people, nation’ and ↗ʔummī (traditionally rendered as) ‘illiterate’—with initial ʔ- rather than ʕ- —are based on ^†ʕamm ‘company of men, tribe, people’, cf. below, section WEST, and entries ↗ʔummaẗ and ↗ʔummī for more details.

hist

▪ …

cogn

▪ For the kinship term WSem *ʕamm- ‘grandfather, ancestor’ on which CSem *ʕamm- ‘people’ probably is based, cf. cognates given in entry ↗ʕamm ‘paternal uncle’.
▪ For the extended value treated in the present entry cf. (Kogan2015, Tropper 2008, et al.): Ug ʕm ‘kinsfolk, people’, Hbr ʕām, ʕam, Syr ʕammā ‘people’, Min ʕm , Ar ^†ʕamm ‘(Lane:) company of men, tribe; (Hava1899:) crowd; numerous party; dense (palm-trees, herbs)’. – Cf. prob. also the prep. Ug ʕm /ʕimma/, Hbr ʕim, JudPal ʕäm, Sab ʕm, Min ʕm, Qat ʕm-n ‘together with’, ? Ar maʕa (metath.) ‘with’, ʕinda (< *ʕim-da ‘by’, ? ʕan ‘from’).

disc

▪ While Huehnergard2011 assumes the belonging to the paternal lineage to be a characteristic already of the noun he reconstructs as ComSem *ʕamm , Kogan2015 regards it as a secondary phenomenon, reconstructing the—lineage-wise still unspecific—kinship term WSem *ʕamm- ‘grandfather, ancestor’ from which the meaning ‘kinsfolk, clan, tribe’ and then also ‘people’ in general probably are semantic extensions.
▪ How Ar ʕimāmaẗ ‘turban’ fits into this picture remains unclear so far, see ↗ʕMː (ʕMM) and ↗ʕimāmaẗ. Further research needed.
▪ From CSem *ʕamm ‘kinsfolk, clan, tribe; people’ are perh. also Ar ↗ʔummaẗ ‘nation, people, community’ and, hence, the adj. ↗ʔummī, traditionally rendered as ‘illiterate’, but perh. properly meaning ‘of the (Arab) people’. See briefly below, section WEST, and s.v. for more details.

west

▪ Tu amme ‘common, general; the public, common people’: 1574 Hoca Saʕdeddīn Ef., Tāǧü’t-Tevārīḫ : ʕāmme-i bilād-i ʕOs̱māniyeyi nehbü iḥrāḳ itmeğe ittifāḳleri oldı. < Ar ʕāmmaẗ ‘the common people’ < Ar ʕamma ‘to encompass, be common, general’ – Nişanyan01Apr2015. – Cf. also amiyane ‘vulgarly (adv.); vulgar’ (< Ar ʕāmmī + Pers adv.suff. -āne), avam ‘the common people; rabble, mob; the commons’ (< Ar ʕawāmm), imece ‘work done for the community by the whole village; by the united efforts of the community’.
▪ Tu katliam (ḳatl-i âm) ‘massacre’: 1535 Fużūlī, Leylà ve Mecnūn : ḳatl-i ʕāmm içün verir cellāda tīġ-i āb-dār. < Ar qatl ʕāmm ‘mass murder, massacre’ (qatl ‘killing’ + ʕāmm ‘general, all-encompassing’) – Nişanyan15May2015.
▪ Tu umum ‘general, public’ : 1574 Hoca Saʕdeddīn Ef., Tāǧü’t-Tevārīḫ. – umumhane ‘brothel’ : 1930 Cumhuriyet (daily newspaper). < Ar ʕumūm ‘the public, people, everybody) – Nişanyan11Dec2015. – Cf. also alelumum ‘generally, in general, commonly (adv.)’ (< Ar ʕalà ’l-ʕumūm), umumi ‘general; universal; common; public’ (< Ar ʕumūmī), müddeiumumi ‘public prosecutor’ (< Ar muddaʕī ʕumūmī), umumiyet ‘universality; generality’ (< Ar ʕumūmiyyaẗ).
▪ ? Engl umma, from Ar ↗ʔummaẗ ‘nation, people, community’, from Aram ʔumməṯā, from Akk ummatu ‘troop’, probably from earlier *ʕammatum, f. of *ʕamm ‘paternal kinsman’ – Huehnergard2011.

deriv

► ʕammat il-balwà bi-hī, expr., it has become a general necessity

► ʕammama, vb. II, 1 to generalize; 2 to spread universally, universalize, popularize, democratize; 3 to make universally accessible, open to the public at large; 4 to introduce universally: D-stem, caus. – 5 ↗ʕimāmaẗ.
► ʕamīm, adj., 1 general, universal, common, prevalent; 2 all-comprehensive: quasi-PP I, ints.
► ^BP#1204ʕumūm, n., 1 generality, universality, prevalence; 2 whole, total, totality, aggregate; 3 al-~, n., the (general) public, the public at large: originally a pl. of ^†ʕamm ‘company of men, tribe, people’? | ~an, adv., in general, generally; ~an… ḫuṣūṣan, adv., in general… in particular; ʕalà ’l-~, adv., in general, generally; fī ~ al-quṭr, adv., throughout the country; maǧlis al-~, n., the House of Commons, the Lower House; ʕumūm frequently replaces ʕumūmī in compound terms of administrative language, e.g.: ǧāmiʕaẗ ~ al-ʕummāl, n.f., general federation of labour; ʔidāraẗ ~ al-ǧamārik, n.f., General Administration of Customs and Tariffs (Eg.); dīwān ~ al-maṣlaḥaẗ, n., administration headquarters, chief administration office; dīwān ~ al-māliyyaẗ, n., General Administration of Finances (Eg.); mufattiš ~ al-nīl al-ǧanūbī, n., Inspector General for the Southern Nile (Eg.).
► ^BP#3120ʕumūmī, adj., 1 public; 2 universal; 3 general; 4 common; 5 state, civil, public: nsb-adj. from ʕumūm. | ǧamʕiyyaẗ ~iyyaẗ, n.f., plenary session; general assembly; dār al-kutub al-~iyyaẗ, n.f., public library; ʔašġāl / ʔaʕmāl ~iyyaẗ, n.pl., public works; al-ṣundūq al-~, n., public treasure; wakīl ~, n., general agent, distributor (com.); al-ǧuzʔiyyāt wa’l-~iyyāt, n.f.pl., the particular and the general aspects, the minor and the major issues.
► ʕumūmiyyaẗ, n.f., public character, openness to the general public: abstr. in -iyyaẗ, from ʕumūm.
► ^BP#3727taʕmīm, n., 1 generalization, universalization, general propagation or diffusion, popularization, democratization; 2 vulgarization: vn. II.
► taʕmīmī, adj.: ʔamr ~, n., general order, governmental edict to all agencies and departments: nsb-adj., from taʕmīm, vn. II.
► ^BP#88ʕāmm, adj., 1 public; 2 universal, prevalent; 3 general; 4 common: quasi-PA I. | al-ʔamn al-~, n., public security; mudīr ~, n., director general, general manager; al-raʔy al-~, n., public opinion; al-ṣāliḥ al-~, n., or al-maṣlaḥaẗ al-~aẗ, n.f., public welfare, the common-weal; al-ḫāṣṣ wa’l-~, n., high and low, all men, all, everybody; ʕilm al-luġaẗ al-~, n., general linguistics. – For ʕāmm as the counter-concept of ↗ḫāṣṣ, cf. art. “al-ʕĀmm wa-l-khāṣṣ” (Joseph E. Lowry), in EI³.
► ^BP#2414ʕāmmaẗ, n.f., 1 general public, people at large; 2 al-~, n.f., the common people, the broad mass of the people; 3 ~an, adv., in general; generally; commonly, altogether, in the aggregate, collectively: nominalized f. of ʕāmm, quasi-PA I of ʕamma. | ḫāṣṣaẗan…~an, adv., in particular… in general; ~ al-nās = al-~; al-ḫāṣṣaẗ wa’l-~, n.f./pl., high and low, all men, all, everybody.
► al-ʕawāmm, n.pl., 1 the common people, the populace; 2 the laity (Chr.): pl. of ʕāmmaẗ, f. of ʕāmm, quasi-PA I.
► ʕāmmī, 1 adj., common, vulgar, plebeian, ordinary, popular: nsb-adj., from ʕāmmaẗ, nominalized f. of ʕāmm, quasi-PA I of ʕamma; 2 n., ordinary person, man in the street: nominalized adj. –; 3 al-ʕāmmiyyaẗ, n.f., popular language, colloquial language: short for al‑ ↗luġaẗ al-~ ‘the language of the ʕāmmaẗ ’.

For other values attached to the same root, cf. ↗ʕamm, ↗ʕimāmaẗ, and, for the whole picture, ↗ʕMː (ʕMM).

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