Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ Jeffery1938: »It is used of shipping in general (xxx, 45; xlv, 11), of Noah’s Ark (vii, 62; x, 74), and of the ship from which Jonah was cast (xxx vii, 140). / The root falaka means ‘to have rounded breasts’ (Lane, Lex, 2443), and from the same primitive Sem root we get Akk pilakku, Hbr päläk, Ar falkaẗ, all meaning the ‘whirl of a spindle’, and by another line of derivation Ar falak, Eth [Gz] falak for the ‘celestial hemisphere’. So the philologers as a rule endeavour to derive fulk from this root, imagining it is so named from its rounded shape.¹ The philologers, however, were somewhat troubled by the fact that it could be masc., fem., and pl., without change of form (LA, xii, 367), and there can be little doubt that the word is a borrowing. Vollers, ZDMG, 1, 620; li, 300, claims that it is the Grk epʰólkion which usually means a ‘small boatʼ towed after a ship,² but from the Periplus Maris Erythraei, 16,³ we gather that as used around the Red Sea it must have meant a vessel of considerable size. The borrowing was probably direct from the Grk, though there is a possibility that it came through an Aram medium.⁴ «

1. Rāġib, Mufradāt, 393, however, reverses this position, and thinks the celestial sphere was called fulk because it was like a boat. 2. Vide Athenacus, 208 F. 3. In C. Müller, Geographi Graeci Minores, i, 271. 4. Fraenkel, Fremdw, 212. Halevy, ZA, ii, 401, denies the derivation from epʰólkion, claiming that in that case the Ar word would have been fulq.

west

–

deriv

–

Permanent link

http://www2.hf.uio.no/common/apps/permlink/permlink.php?app=polyglotta&context=record&uid=d9d9ae75-06ff-11ee-937a-005056a97067

Choose languages

Choose images, etc.

Choose languages

Choose display