Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ One may be tempted to connect Ar fiṣḥ ‘Pessach, Passover; Easter’ with ↗faṣuḥa, u (faṣāḥaẗ), today mostly meaning ‘to use good, clear language; to be eloquent’, but earlier also ^†‘to be pure, without froth (milk)’, and interpret it fiṣḥ ‘Pesach, Easter’ as a *‘feast of purity’. This, however, is secondary and the result of a root merger that made both (Aram) PṢḤ and Ar FṢḤ into homonymous roots.

hist

▪ …

cogn

▪ BDB1906, CAD: (? Akk pašāḫu ‘peace, tranquillity; to be at rest, become tranquil, act benevolently, relent, abate, settle’, puššuḫu ‘to calm, soothe, heal, relax, restore’, pašḫu ‘soothing’), Hbr pā̈saḥ ‘Passover’, pāsaḥ ‘to pass over, spring over’, Syr peṣḥā ‘Passover’.

disc

▪ Listed separately in WehrCowan1979, but seen as belonging to the same theme of ‘purity’ as ↗faṣuḥa by Ayoub (EALL, “faṣīḥ”). Variant vowelling (fiṣḥ ~ faṣḥ) indicates that it is a loan.
▪ Either directly from Hbr pā̈saḥ ‘Passover’ or indirectly, via Syr peṣḥā, which seems more likely for phonological reasons. Compared to Hbr pā̈saḥ, both Syr and Ar show forms with regressive assimilation of *-s- to -ṣ- due to following emphatic -ḥ. A reading of the Jewish Pessach not being a festival of ‘passing over’ (FSḤ) but of ‘purity’ (FṢḤ) is probably secondary. The original relation with Ar ↗fasaḥa would then have been forgotten, or ignored, in order to connect the feast to faṣuḥa.¹
▪ Acc. to Lane,² an alternative name for the Passover, besides fiṣḥ, is al- ↗fāsiḫ .
▪ However, should Ar fiṣḥ reflect original terminology, then Pessach would be, originally, not a feast of passing over but one of (ritual?) purity. Given the fact that the sacrifice rituals point to a Nomadic tradition of spring sacrifices—as does also Passover’s Islamic counterpart, the ↗ʕumraẗ (also called ‘smaller ḥaǧǧ ’)—, a relation of Pessach to FṢḤ rather than to FSḤ should not be prematurely excluded.

1. Cf. al-Bustānī, Qaṭr al-muḥīṭ, 1869, who holds that fiṣḥ »is an Arabization of Hbr fisiḥ, meaning ‘crossing, pass over’, ‘transit,’ and ‘escape’.« 2. Lane VI (1877): 2404.)

west

▪ Not from Ar fiṣḥ, but from the same Hbr etymon are Engl Pesach ‘Passover’ and the old word for ‘Easter’, Pasch(e) (eC12), paschal ‘of or pertaining to Easter’, eC15, from oFr paschal (C12) and directly from lLat paschalis, from pascha ‘Passover, Easter’, from Grk pásχa ‘Passover’, from Aram pasḥā ‘pass over’, corresponding to Hbr pā̈saḥ, from pāsaḥ ‘to pass over’ – Huehnergard 2011, EtymOnline . — Cf. also Fr Pâques, It Pasqua, Span Pascua, Port Páscoa, Russ Pasxa, No påske, etc.

deriv

► ʔafṣaḥa, vb. IV, 1 to celebrate Easter (Chr.); 2 to celebrate Passover (Jud.): denom. — 3 For other values see section DERIV in entry ↗faṣuḥa.

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