الرُّجوع
root: ر-ج-ع / form I verbal noun / definition: to return
Do you ever let your mind wander, then pull it back, then realise the wandering might have been going somewhere?
Let me explain.
I came across a verb under the root ء-ب-ب on the first page of the Hans Wehr dictionary:
The meaning of this form I hamzated verb is, in itself, interesting. أَبَّ / يَؤُبُّ means “to long for one’s homeland”.
But my first thought was: Oh, is this related to the word for “father”, أَب?
It would be strange, I thought, if that was the case. The homeland (الوطن) in Arabic is more closely associated with the image of the mother.
Yet, despite this—and the fact that the verb أَبَّ and the noun أَب appear to be from different roots—the phonological similarity was hard to ignore.
I did ignore it for a while though (…hard as it was to close the dictionary and live life as though I wasn’t burdened by the relentless desire to know…).
But it popped into my mind again today, so I thought I’d head to my second go-to dictionary and check out the same root in Lane’s Lexicon. And what I found was interesting.
First of all, the form I verb أَبَّ / يَؤُبُّ in Lane’s Lexicon is primarily defined as “to prepare oneself to go on a journey”.
The definition of “to long for one’s homeland” also appears later on under the verb, and it’s not too hard to see the connection between the two: along the lines of journeying away from the homeland.
Secondly, it’s mentioned that the hamza sometimes transforms into a و, giving us وَبَّ / يَوُبُّ—good to know.
And thirdly, and most importantly, under this root in Lane’s Lexicon, we also find a form X verb:
اِستَأَبَّ / يَستَئِبُّ means “to adopt as a father“. It mentions here that this verb is derived from a dialectal variant of the word for “father”, أَبّ rather than the standard أَب.
So maybe I was onto something at the start?
Should we explore it more? Should we let our minds continue wandering? And at what point do we close the dictionary tabs and get the sleep that our eyes and minds are craving?
.تصبحون على خير
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