اِكفِهْرار
root: ك-ف-ه-ر / form IV quadriliteral verbal noun / definition: gloom
It’s mid-November and my winter blues are bursting vibrantly into full swing. I sort of feel like I’m in a gloomy room with a heartbroken flamenco dancer who keeps passionately swishing her black skirt in my face whilst I’m trying to draft an outline for my PhD literature review in the candlelight that only illuminates glimpses of her pained expressions.
Perhaps part of me wants to get up and dance too, but I’m decidedly an observer in this beautifully sombre display swirling around me.
Maybe I’ve set a mildly depressing scene… but it’s not too bad of a setting in which to introduce the focus of this post: لَلأَسَف.
As we may know, لَلأسف (note the fatha on that first ل) means “unfortunately”.
But how does the noun أسف (“sorrow, grief”) preceded by لَـ come to this meaning?
Well, back in the comment section of Wehr Wednesdays #174, we discussed the use of يا لَـ followed by a noun to express astonishment. يا لَلوقاحة (“what cheek!”) was the example in the post.
And لَلأسف is actually a shortened form of يا لَلأسفِ. In addition to “unfortunately”, we might also translate it as “oh what grief!” or something similar.
In fact, both يا and وا can be used as exclamatory particles, as we saw in The Exclamation of Lament, where we looked at examples of the وا + (اسم)+اه construction. The first example in that post was actually وا أَسَفاه (“oh grief!”, “alas!”).
Similarly, we can pair يا and أسف without لَـ preceding the noun, but we need to add an alif (either ا or ى) after it instead—giving us يا أسفا (alternatively spelt يا أسفى). Note the long aa sounds in both وا أسفاه and يا أسفا as, what I assume is, an expression of pain.
In Lane’s Lexicon, the example of يا أسفا occurs in the phrase يا أَسَفَا عَلى يُوسُفَ (translated there as “O my grief for Joseph”), which occurs in a verse of the Qur’an.
That’s it for this post, I should really get back to that literature review outline now…
!في أمان الله
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