إمْلاء
root: م-ل-ء / form IV verbal noun / definition: spelling, filling out
After I submitted my first-year PhD work last week, I had two days of conducting students’ oral exams followed by an unplanned overnight stay, then a wedding, then a Saturday outing and a Sunday (today) of ticking things off my to-do list.
It seems as though this coming week is going to get even busier as I realised today that I misread (i.e. didn’t read at all) an important form, and now I have four weekdays—thanks to the Bank Holiday—before I travel to sort things out before the deadline.
Someone once pointed out that I hyperfixate on irrelevant things when I’m stressed, and perhaps that’s why my mind won’t let go of something that I noticed in the dictionary…
On page 486 of the Hans Wehr dictionary, we find the root س-ك-ب:
Do you notice anything odd?
If you look closely, you’ll notice that the form I verb and its verbal noun are transliterated incorrectly:
Rather than sakaba and sakb, we find sabaka and sabk in the dictionary.
The root س-ب-ك (s-b-k) has a completely different meaning to س-ك-ب (s-k-b). The former is related to casting metal whilst the latter is related to pouring—
—oh, wait. That’s not so different after all.
Both are related to pouring then. I guess that makes them a bit like word twins.
Anyway, the point is… Well, I’m not sure there’s necessarily a point (like I said, stress and irrelevance) but I am curious as to whether there are any other spelling mistakes in the Hans Wehr.
Have you noticed any?
Check out my other Dictionary Finds for more (and probably more interesting) discoveries and I’ll see you on my next post.
!إلى اللقاء
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