Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ [v1] Kogan2011: from protSem *nah(a)r‑ ‘river’. Underlying may be the idea of *‘(water) gushing forth and carving a river bed/channel into the earth/soil’.
▪ [v2] Figurative use (?).

hist

▪ …

cogn

▪ Dolgopolsky 2012 #1619: Akk nāru ‘river, canal; vein’, Ug nhr (Tropper 2008: [*nah(a)ru]) ‘stream, river, flood’, BiblHbr nāhār ‘stream, river’, oAram nhr ‘river, watercourse’, (BDB 1906: BiblAram nhar ‘river’), JudAram [Targ] nahrā ‘stream’, Syr nahrā, Ar nahr ~ nahar ‘river’, Sab ʔnhr (pl.) ‘irrigation channels’. – Cf. also corresponding verb: BiblHbr nāhar ‘to stream’, Ar nahara ‘to flow abundantly’ (blood, river), Gz nahara ‘to flow, go down, leap’
▪ BDB 1906, Klein 1987: Hbr minhārâh (dubious) ‘(BDB:) crevices, ravines (?), (Klein:) fissure, cleft, (nHbr) tunnel’: perh. related to Ar ^†minhar(aẗ) ‘place hollowed out by water’, ^†manhar ‘bed of a river, channel of water’

disc

▪ Huehnergard 2011 assumes a ComSem noun *nah(a)r‑ ‘river’.
▪ Similarly, Dolgopolsky 2012 #1619 reconstructs Sem *nahar- ‘stream, river’ (verbal root *√NHR ‘to stream’ attested only in WSem). – Based on Sem and extra-AfrAs evidence, the author further reconstructs Nostr *ńihR˹a˺ ‘to stream; a stream, liquid’.
▪ According to Gabal 2012-IV: 2337, Ar nahr ‘river’ belongs to a theme √NHR the basic meaning of which is ‘copious (or also thin) flowing, broadly and extensively, from an opening (which it also produces and widens/carves out)’, based on a 2-consonantal nucleus *NH- meaning ‘an opening, a void space filled by s.th.’.
▪ Fraenkel doubted that nah(a)r is a genuinely Arabic word (as already Guidi 1879: 7 had assumed). According to him, »the Arabs can hardly have had an idea of a stream because they only knew wādī and sayl in their lands. nah(a)r however is a big stream, and I believe that the Arabs have taken its name from the inhabitants of Euphrates region« – Fraenkel 1886: 285.
▪ The Sem word has also been loaned into lEg as *nahara, Nah(a)rêna ‘stream, river’ – Hoch 1994 #253. – Cf. also (#254) lEg *nahara ‘flowing; fleeing’ or ‘to flee; to sail’, (#255) *naharû (?) ‘fugitives’.
[v2] The value ‘(newspaper) column’ given in Wehr/Cowan could not be attested elsewhere. If this is not a mistake it must be a case of figurative use (*‘channel/river bed in which text is flowing’?). No explanation could be traced.

west

▪ Engl Achernar ‘α Eridani (astron.)’, the brightest ‘star’ or point of light—actually, it is the primary star in a binary system—in the constellation of Eridanus, from Ar ʔāḫir al-nahr ‘the end(point) of The River’ (Grk Potamós, sc. the Eridanus) – Huehnergard 2011.

deriv

► mā bayna ’l-nahrayn, n.topogr., (lit., what is between the two rivers, sc. Euphrates and Tigris) Mesopotamia
► mā warāʔa ’l-nahr, n.topogr., (lit., what is behind/beyond the river, sc. the Oxus) Transoxiana
► nahr ʔurdunn, n.fl., the Jordan river
► nahr al-salām, n.fl., (lit., river of peace) the Tigris
► nahr al-šarīʕaẗ, n.fl., the Jordan river
► nahr al-ʕāṣī, n.fl., the Orontes

► nahara, a (nahr), vb. I, 1. to flow copiously, stream forth, gush forth: BDB 1906 (s.v. Hbr nāhar) thinks that the Ar vb. I ‘to run, flow’ is »perh[aps] denom[inative] fr[om] nahr ‘river’«; 2. ↗nahara
► nahrī, adj., river- (in compounds), riverine, fluvial, fluviatile: nisba formation from nahr.
► nahīr, adj., copious, ample, abundant, plentiful, much: quasi-PP.
► nuhayr, pl. ‑āt, little river, creek, brook; a tributary, an affluent: dimin. of nahr.

For other items from the root, see ↗√NHR.

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