Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ In addition to naǧīl, which is attested from pre-Islamic times on, there is also a LevAr expression for ‘couch grass’, šilš al-ʔinǧīl. It is hard to decide whether naǧīl may be a ‘re-Arabization’ of the dialectal (šilš al‑) ʔinǧīl or whether the latter is a ‘Christian’ re-interpretation of the former.
▪ However, given that naǧīl also exists in EgAr and has produced denominal vb.s there, EtymArab thinks that LevAr šilš al-ʔinǧīl is secondary. For naǧīl, EtymArab therefore suggests a genuine etymology in which the plant is the *‘grass that breaks through (the soil), “springs” from the earth, and spreads’ (cf. ^†[v18] in root entry ↗√NǦL), itself based on the more general notion of a *‘wide opening’ ([v2], cf. ↗ʔanǧalᵘ ‘wide open [eyes], gaping [wound]’), from *‘to split, pierce (s.th.)’ (^†[v15]), from an original *‘to throw away, fling, strike off (a spear, etc.)’ (^†[v11]).

hist

▪ first attested 609 CE in a verse by Ṭufayl b. ʕAwf al-ʕAnawī – HDAL (1Jun2020)

cogn

▪ BadawiHinds1986: EgAr nigīl ‘any of a number of types of grass (including couch grass, Bermuda grass and orchard grass), naggil (vb. II) ‘1 to free of nigīl; 2 to grass, produce grass, become grassy’.

disc

▪ In addition to standard Ar naǧīl ‘bitter plant sought by camels; bastard dittany (bot.)’, Hava1899 lists, under the same root lemma NǦL, also the item šilš al-ʔinǧīl ‘couch grass’, marked as LevAr. This marking as dialectal and the naming of the grass after the Gospel, al‑ ↗ʔinǧīl, may lead to the assumption that naǧīl is just a ‘re-Arabization’ of what originally was a Christian dialectal coining, carried out on the foreign expression to make it conform to a ‘genuine’ Ar root. Most probably it was the other way round, however, and šilš al-ʔinǧīl is a local/regional re-interpretation, originating in Christian circles, of the fuṣḥà term naǧīl. Two points speak in favour of this theory: (a) naǧīl is attested already in pre-Islamic poetry; (b) naǧīl has a cognate in EgAr nigīl, which also has produced some denominative verbs. – Both facts suggest that the term for a specific type of grass was more widespread than only in the Levant.
▪ Although BadawiHinds1986 classify EgAr nigīl and EgAr nagl ‘son’ as from different roots (marked ¹NGL and ²NGL, respectively), EtymArab still thinks the two items, as well as most others in the root, belong together; suggested etymology (for the whole picture, cf. ↗NǦL): *^†[v11] ‘to throw away, fling, strike off (a spear, etc.)’ > thereby ^†[v15] ‘split, pierce (s.th.)’ and cause a [v2] ‘wide opening’ > to break through this opening, ^†[v18] burst out and spread > grass that does so = [v3] ‘couch grass, orchard grass’.
▪ For *‘throwing away, flinging, striking off (a spear, etc.)’, Orel&Stolbova1994 reconstructed Sem *n˅gil‑ ‘to throw’ < AfrAs *n˅gol‑ ‘id.’ as hypothetical predecessors.

west

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deriv

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