…But this has little to do with Hebrew. My point was rather was two-fold, first to show how Arabic and Hebrew borrow the same Aramaic term to describe different things, and second that you can't always trust a dictionary definition alone for a cognate even for common words, particularly for Arabic where the words tend to accrue meanings and where changed circumstances had led to rapid development of vocabulary on the first few centuries of Islam. And where our lexicons are based on the admirable medieval lexica (Arabic) which, however, were not really based on historical principles.John Leake
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