Arabic Observations: Another Collection of Word Twins

مَجْموعة

root: ج-م-ع / noun / plural: مَجموعات / definition: collection, group

In Akkadian class last week, we learnt that mut (“husband”) plus the possessive pronoun suffix –ša (“her”) join to form mussa, in a phonological process triggered when the š finds itself snuggled up next to a dental or sibilant phoneme. Our teacher also reminded us not to confuse mut with mūt (“death”, مَوت).

Anyhow—I’ll hold back on the Akkadian vocabulary for now, because in this post, I wanted to share some more Arabic word twins I’ve discovered during my dictionary perusals.

Word twins (which is what I call them in my head and by no means a linguistic term) are pairs of words that differ by a single letter or phoneme but carry the same meaning.

We looked at a few examples in Arabic Observations: Word Twins and Arabic Observations: More Word Twins, but I’ve noted down some more since then. Here they are:

سَهِرَ / سَهِدَ

Both of these form I verbs mean “to be sleepless”, and they follow the same vowelling (فَعِلَ / يَفعَلُ) and verbal noun patterns (فَعَلٌ). (See Form I Verb Vowelling Patterns.)

The form II verb from the root س-ه-د (i.e. سَهَّدَ / يُسَهِّدُ) also corresponds with the form IV of the س-ه-ر root (أَسهَرَ / يُسهِرُ), which both mean “to keep someone awake” seeing as form II and IV verbs tend to have causative meanings.

وَحشي / حوشي

These two nisba adjectives can be translated as “wild” or “untamed”, although وَحشي tends to encompass more negative meanings like “brutal” and “savage”.

The root و-ح-ش is strongly associated with loneliness and isolation whilst ح-و-ش is more to do with gathering and holding back.

أَصيل / أَثيل

The adjectives أصيل and أثيل both carry the meanings of “deep-rooted” and “of noble origin”.

ء-ص-ل is the more well-known root, with meanings related to roots and foundation. And the meanings of ء-ث-ل centre around strengthening and richness. So أصيل and أثيل emphasise different aspects of the same meanings.

مَهَّدَ / وَهَّدَ

Both of these form II verbs mean “to level something” or “to prepare for something”.

We’ve encountered the verb مهّد before in the phrase مهّد الطريق إلى.

جُثمان / جُسمان

جُثمان from the root ج-ث-م and جُسمان from ج-س-م both mean “body”, although the former is also commonly used to mean “corpse”. The latter, on the other hand, comes from the same root at جِسم, one of the common words for “body” along with جَسَد.

ج-س-م is related to largeness and materialising, whilst ج-ث-م has to do with crouching or lying down.

We looked at an interesting phrase from the root ج-ث-م in Wehr Wednesdays #28.

وَلَهَ / دَلِهَ

Both these form I verbs mean “to go crazy with emotion or love”. دَلِهَ always reminds me of the Turkish word deli (“crazy”). I mentioned the root in Root Exploration: د-ل-ه-م and Wehr Wednesdays #190.

ع-ي-ر / ع-ر-ر

ع-ي-ر and ع-ر-ر are like twin roots, I guess. They’re both associated with shame.

From the ع-ي-ر, we get the common word for “shame”, عار. And under ع-ر-ر, we find the form I verb عَرَّ / يَعُرُّ (“to be a (or bring) shame or disgrace”) and the noun مَعَرَّة (“disgrace, stigma”).

Feel free to share any other Arabic word twins you’ve come across!

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