Bibliotheca Polyglotta

v1 (vn. ¹kafr): to cover, hide
v2 (vn. ²kufr, kufrān, kufūr): to be irreligious, be an infidel, not to believe; kafara bi-’llāh also: to blaspheme God, curse, swear; to renege one’s faith, become an infidel; to be ungrateful (for a benefit) – WehrCowan1979.

conc

▪ The vb. kafara in its meaning ‘to cover, hide’ (v1) is old, going back to a Sem vb. that must have meant s.th. like *‘to wipe, clean, polish, purify, cover’ (Huehnergard2011).
▪ The figurative meanings attached to it and a number of derivations, however, may be Hebraisms or Aramaisms. This is evidently the case with the notion of ‘expiation’, as in kaffara ‘to expiate’ (vb. II), kaffāraẗ ‘penance, expiation; (hence also:) expiatory gifts’ and the vn. II takfīr in the sense of ‘expiation, atonement, penance (for a sin)’.
▪ The case of v2 ‘to be infidel’, however, is doubtful. Jeffery connects it to a Hbr-Syr context, while Huehnergard2011 considers it to be derived from kafr ‘village’; in this theory, an ‘infidel’ would thus be, originally, a *‘villager’. But the sense of ‘to deny one’s religion’ is not too far from ‘to cover, hide’, so it may well be a genuinly Ar innovation.

hist

▪ eC7 Used very frequently in Q in the sense of ‘to deny the existence of God’, then also ‘to be an unbeliever’.

cogn

▪ DRS 10 (2012)#KPR-1: Akk kapāru ‘étendre, essuyer (en frottant)’, ? Ug kpr ‘essuyer (?)’, JP kəpar ‘essuyer, nettoyer’; Akk kuppuru ‘purifier’, kāpir : un ouvrier du temple, Hbr kipper ‘expier’, JP kapper ‘expier’, Sab kfr ‘pardonner (un péché)’, Palm kprh, Nab kprʔ, Liḥy kafr‑ ‘tombeau, sépulcre’.

disc

▪ Jeffery1938, 250: »In its various forms it is of common use in the Qurʔān, and the root is undoubtedly Ar, but as a technical religious term it has been influenced by outside usage. – The primitive sense of kafara ‘to cover or conceal’, corresponds with the Aram כפר; Syr kfr, and a derivative from this primitive sense occurs in the Qurʔān, 57:20, in the word kuffār ‘husbandmen’, i.e. ‘they who cover the seed’. The form kaffara, however, corresponds with the Hbr kippēr, Aram kappēr, and means ‘to cover’ in the sense of ‘atone’.¹ In this sense it is used with ʕan, and al-Suyūṭī, Itq, 324; Mutaw, 56, tells us that some early authorities noted this kafara ʕan as derived from Hebr or Nabataean. The commoner use, however, is with bi‑, in the sense of ‘to deny the existence or goodness of God’, and this use with bi‑ is characteristic of Syriac. The form kāfir, an ‘unbeliever’, and kufr ‘unbelief’, may indeed be independent borrowings from the [Talm]Hbr kōp̄ā̈r, Syr kāp̄ōrā and kāp̄ōrūṯā (Ahrens, Christliches, 41), though a kpr as a proper name seems to occur in the Thamudic inscriptions (Ryckmans, Nom propres, i, 115). The form [Ar] kaffāraẗ may, however, be a direct borrowing from the Jews, cf. Horovitz, JPN, 220. – Hirschfeld, Beiträge, 90; Horovitz, KU, 59, and Torrey, Foundation, 48, 144, would have the dominant influence on the Ar in this connection from the Jewish community, and Pautz, Offenbarung, 159, n.; Mingana, Syriac Influence, 86, stand for a Christian source. Again it is really impossible to decide (cf. Ahrens, Christliches, 21).«
▪ Pennacchio2014: 138 follows Jeffery in assigning vb. II, kaffara to Hbr Aram kippär ‘to expiate’, while she thinks that kaffāraẗ ‘expiation’ is not a borrowing from late [Talm] Hbr kappārā ‘expiation’, but must be earlier (from where? – Ahrens1930: 22 excluded BiblHbr kappōräṯ ‘propitiatory’, a late technical term from ‘to cover over sin’…).
▪ In contrast to all other references, Huehnergard2011 connects the meaning ‘to be infidel’ to ↗kafr ‘village’ (‘infidel’ < *‘villager’). For further discussion, see ↗kāfir.

1. The SAr kfr seems also to have this meaning; cf. Rossini, Glossarium, 170.

west

▪ (Huehnergard2011:) Engl cyprinid; cyprinodont, from Grk kuprīnos ‘carp’, perh. from kúpros ‘henna’ (from the fish’s color), prob. from a Sem source akin to Ug kpr and Hbr kōper ‘henna’ (perh. ultimately from √KPR in the meaning ‘to wipe, cover’ > ‘to cover with dye’, cf. Ar ↗kafara).
▪ Not from Ar, but from Hbr (to which the Ar vb. is akin), is Yom Kippur, the name of the Jewish holiday. According to EtymOnline, the word came into English by mC19 (first attested 1854) from Mishnaic Hbr yôm kippûr (BiblHebr yôm kippûrîm), lit. ‘day of atonement,’ from yôm ‘day’ + kippûr ‘atonement, expiation.’

deriv

v1
► kaffara, vb. II, to cover, hide: ints.

v2
► kaffara, vb. II, 1 to expiate; to do penance, atone, make amends; to grant remission (of one’s sins); to forgive, grant pardon: probably a Hebraism-Aramaism; 2 to make an infidel, seduce to unbelief: caus., denom. from kāfir or kufr.
► ʔakfara, vb. IV, to make an infidel; to call an infidel, accuse of infidelity: caus., denom. from kāfir or kufr.

► kafr, n., village ↗s.v.
► ^BP#3044C kufr, kufrān, n., unbelief, infidelity ↗kufr
► kafar, pl. ‑āt (saud.-ar., Eg.), n., rubber tire (for cars, bicycles): ?
► kaffār, n., infidel, unbeliever: ints.
► kaffāraẗ, n.f., penance, atonement (for a sin), expiation; reparation, amends; expiatory gifts, expiations (distributed to the poor at a funeral):
► takfīr, n., 1 expiation, atonement, penance (for a sin); 2 seduction to infidelity; charge of unbelief
► ^BP#3646C kāfir, pl. ‑ūn, kuffār, kafaraẗ, kifār, adj./n., irreligious, unbelieving; unbeliever, infidel, atheist; ungrateful: PA I (but see "Discussion").
► kāfūr, n., camphor ↗s.v..

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