Exploring Time in the Arabic Dictionary: “Season”

هَنْهونة

root: ه-ن-ه-ن / noun / definition: lullaby

Tuesday’s early-hours London sky boomed and ignited in thunderstorm, and I—with my passionate affection for summer storms—heard the rumbles and roars as cradlesong and slipped effortlessly back into sleep after dawn prayer.

I was, however, mildly fearful that the “triangle of death” would fly into my room; that is, the giant and blurry moth I noticed against the window through sleepy, glasses-absent eyes. But the lullaby of the sky’s tumult was too slumber-inducing to protest rest.

Speaking of summer storms, we’re circling back to our Exploring Time series to look at the Arabic word for season.

مَوْسِم

root: و-س-م

The Arabic word for a season, مَوْسِم, is derived from an assimilated root (و-س-م) and is in the form of a noun of time or place, following the pattern مَفْعِل.

To understand this noun—and how its form contributes to its meaning—we have to first look into the meanings of its root, و-س-م:

form I (وَسَمَ / يَسِمُ): to mark or brand; from this form, we get the derived passive-verb phrase وُسِمَ جبينه بـ, “to be written over someone’s face”
form II (وَسَّمَ / يُوَسِّمُ): to distinguish someone
form V (تَوَسَّمَ / يَتَوَسَّمُ): to watch closely, or to be characterised by (بِـ) something; the verbal phrase توسّم فيه خيرا means “to set great hopes on someone”
form VIII (اِتَّسَمَ / يَتَّسِمُ): to be characterised by (بِـ), or to bear the stamp of (بِـ)

Connecting the meanings of the root with the form of the noun, it follows that موسم means the time that is characterised by something. Like how summer is characterised by heat, or autumn by rainfall, or winter by cold, or spring by harvest.

But—more than that, if we reflect on the collocations—it can also carry meanings like: the time that we place great hopes on.

And what could it mean if we looked at that initial مَـ of مَوسم as a reference to place?

The Arabic word for season then becomes a physical landscape; somewhere we place things like hope and memories, the place(s) through which we understand the cycle of temporal seasons.

And, thus, the word موسم contains both definition and expectation.

We define seasons by what they encompass as well as how we anticipate them and what they will contain. And—with that meaning-holding م—we root time to place in another realisation of spacetime reality.

It makes you wonder: how do definition and expectation coexist or collide?

And: is there any way I can write a post about time in the Arabic language without getting too philosophical?

!مع السلامة