Arabic English Dictionary by Steingass

1276 Pages·2009·48.88 MB·English

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THE
'STUDENT'S
ARABIC-ENGLISH
DICTIONARY.
COMPANION VOLUME TO THE AUTHOR'S
EISGLISH-ARABIC DICTIONARY.
BY
F. STEINGASS, Ph.D.,
OF THE DNIVEESITY OF MUNICH; PROFESSOR OF MODERN LANGUAGES,
AND RESIDENT LECTURER ON THE ARABIC LANGUAGE, LITERATURE, AND LAW,
AT THE ORIENTAL INSTITUTE, WOKING.
LONDON
CROSBY LOCKWOOD AND SON
7, STATIONERS' HALL COURT, LUDGATE HILL, E.C.
LONDON
PRINTED ET W. H. ALLEN AND CO., 13 WATERLOO FLASE. S.W
J.
^((^
—
PEEFACE. V
Aoristis added,if it differs fromthatof the Preterite. Where therefore
no such vowel is mentioned,the vowel of the Preterite is retained in the
Aorist, which is frequently the case if it is a, rarely if it is i, but
always if it is u. The second heading comprises those simple Deriva-
tives, either nouns or adjectives, which do not exceed in number the
original letters of the root.*
Derivatives which are formed by the introduction of so-called servile
or additional letters, and the various measures of the broken Plural,
are to be looked for in their natural alphabetical order, where their
meanings or reference to the singular is given, unless they can be
readily traced back to their respective origin by eliminating such
additional letters according to a few simple rules of easy application.
In order to impress these rules more effectively on the mind of the
student, and to facilitate reference to them in case of need, we will
—
divide the words in question into fou—r clas—ses, na—mely: I. Words
containing a letter of prolongation Q. a,j m, ^s *) or a doubled
consonant ; II. Words beginning withtheletter \; HI. Words beginning
with—the letter ua t; TV. Words beginning with the letter |> m.
I. Words containing aletterof prolongation or a doubled consonant.
In DerivativesorPlurals of thisdescription,not found in the Dictionary,
oronly rendered by meanings which do not fullymeet the requirements
of the case, these letters are to be thrown out, to obtain the root, or
the sin—gular, if it is a plural noun; thus :
1. \ in words of the measures
J^\i/a'i7, the well-known form of the Agent or active participle,
"who does."
JUi /a"«Z, where also the double consonant is to be rejected, or in
other words, the Ta&did to be removed,intensive of the former,
"who does frequently, habitually, by way of trade."
* It is true that, by the arrangement explained in this and the
previous paragraph, sometimes different roots or their derivatives are
thrown together under the same heading: under the heading Jic for
instance, we give, besides ^add and Hdd, belonging to the root (J*c), also
the word ^udd, "pustule," apparently itself a root, and under the
feminine form 6.vc we include 'ida-t, "promise, threat," derived from
the root (>"^^). But this very juxtaposition of disparate meanings will
strike the attention of a thoughtful student, and continually remind
him, that in Arabic, more than in any other language, very similar
forms may have a vastly distinct origin.
— —
t
VI PREFACE.
J^ fi'dl. Infinitive, exceptionally of the primitive verb (in which
case, however, it will befound as a referencein its alphabetical
place), regularly of the third conjugation, along with themore
frequently used measure ^U- mufd'ala-t, "doing with regard
to another, doing reciprocally on the part of two or more."
Also Plural of nouns of the measure J«i/a'Z, fi'l, fw'l, and its
feminine form in 6 . ^ ^
'^fa'W, feminine of the measure J>^\ afal, forming adjectives of
defect and colour (see Class II.)-
Lastly, in Plurals of words which consist of four or more letters,
either originally, or through the introduction of servile letters into tri-
—
literal roots. These plurals are trisyllabic, with a ( ) after the first,
(1 (\ —•) after the second, and i (—) after the penultimate consonant.
If all the letters of the singular are radical, the measure is
JJUifa'dlil, where the second I corresponds to the fourth and fol-
lowing consonants of the singular ; and if the singular is
quadriliteral, it will be obtained by dropping the \ of pro-
longation of the plural; otherwise it will be referred to in
the alphabetical place of the latter.*
The plural measures of words of four and more letters, reducible to
triliteral roots, are
JcU\ afit'il, plural of nouns, or of certain other plurals beginning
with \ , or of adjectives of the measure J**^ afal used substan-
tively (see Class II.).
JcUjtafd'il,pluralofa1«Ajtafila-t.Infinitiveofthe secondconjugation,
mostlyof verbs terminatinginaweak consonant(seeClassIII.).
JjV«ifa'd'il, not given in the Dictionary amongst the alphabetical
references when it is plural of J-«i fa'U or Huai fa'ila-t (the
* The plural ^^;J dinVnm, for instance, is not mentioned, in the
alphabetical order, because the eliminationof the\points to the singular
a^s)JpludriarlhiDoif,Jn=ai-m/e- soaffatrhjael,w"eqluli-nkcneo,w"n JcoJi^n ;'baundtdiElj^asspalfuarrail] oifs q'-uto-t^aeadc
'andalib, " nightingale," because they do not contain all the letters of
their respective singulars.
t For instance: g»^^ asdh>\ plural of f~o\ nsha', 'isha', "finger";
w_J\^ al-i'ilib, plural of ^^^ alduh, plural of paucity of ^-^halh, " dog"
aa\vjWk/i(/(i/i(, plural of ^->^ adhum, "very black," used substantively;
for a black horse, or for the chains of a prisoner. Throwing out the
Alifof prolongation you obtain the heading under which the wished-for
information will be found.
PREFACE.
The Author's aim, in preparing the present volume, has been to provide
the English student,at a moderate price, with a Dictionary which would
enable him to read, not only Arabic books of a limited vocabulary, as
the Qur'dn, or of a comparatively easy andfamiliar style, as the Arabian
Nights; but also such other standard works of a wider etymological
range, as the Hamdsah, the Mu'allaqnt, and, above all, the Maqdmdt of
al-Hariri, which may, with the late Mr. Chenery, be aptly designated as
a "Compendium of the Arabic Language" in all its intricacies and
niceties. The dif&culty of such an undertakingliesin findingthe golden
mean between a merely alphabetical arrangement, which would swell the
book into an inordinate size,and a strictlyetymologicaldispositionunder
roots, which would, undoubtedly, be more to the taste of the scholar,
but frequently embarrass, and hence discourage, the learner whom we
want to aid in his first steps on a journey sufficiently toilsome in itself.
An endeavour of this kind has been made by Prof. Cherbonneau, in his
Ai'abic-French Dictionary, and, on a far more extensive scale and in a
superior manner, by Dr. Adolf Wahrmund, in his Manual Dictionary
of the Arabic and German Languages and these two works, especially
;
the latter, checked by, and occasionally enlarged upon from the MuM{
(anArabicDictionary,published inArabicbyDr. P. Bustani in Beyrout),
form the groundwork of our own book, with such modifications and
additions, however, as to secure for it a fair degree of originality.
We are now going to set forth, as briefly as can be done compatibly
with clearness, the general plan on which this Dictionaryis worked out.
The Arabic words are given in their crude form, i.e. the form in which
they appear before the grammatical terminations are added, and in
Arabic type only as far as they are represented by the letters of the
IV PREFACE.
alphabet,leaving therendering of the diacriticalsigns, Hamzahincluded,
to the transliteration.* Thus each word forms, as it were, a skeleton,
dead and meaningless in itself, but moved into life by the Harakat
(vowel-points), and further to be individualized, as of Arab kin by the
rrab (grammatical inflection). To every male, if I may be allowed to
continue the metaphor, its consort is allotted, that is to say, under each
heading the form or forms withthefemininetermination « are subjoined
to those without it, if both are in use. This has been done, because
frequently the two forms stand mutually in the relationship of singular
and plural, and therefore, by bringing them together in the same
article, many cross-references could be spared.f In a similar way
derivatives with a final ts > especially when forming the so-called
Nisbah or noun of relation (in ^5), are, as a natural offspring, joined
under the same heading to the parent-iorm, but only, if the alpha-
betical order would already bring them in immediate contact with it
(see e.g. article JW^ haydl, &c., p. 347).
Roots,whethertriHteralorquadriliteral,arefound undertwoheadings.
One, placed in parentheses, gives the primitive verbs in the third person
singular masculine, togetherwith their Infinitives, and the Infinitives of
the derived conjugations. In triliteral verbs the medial vowel of the
* The student, when about to make use of this Dictionary, is of
course supposedtobewellacquaintedwiththesesignsfromhis Grammar,
and should his text be pointed, he will have no difficulty in finding
the equivalent in transliteration,for any wordhe may look out, by refer-
ring tothe heading in Arabic type. If, on the contrary, these signs are
omitted from the text, as is always done in editions printed in the East
(for instance, in the Arabian Nights, which he is particularly expected
to read), it would be decidedly more bewildering for him to pick out,
from perhaps half-a-dozen or more repetitions of the same group of
Arabic letters, variously marked, that special combination which he
wants while, by using the one heading, which represents the letters in
;
his book, as amaster-keyfor the different meanings, his eye has simply
to run over the article in order to ascertain that particulai-form which
gives an appropriate sense to the passage in hand.
f If in the first part of an article i is placed after a generic noun it
indicates eitherthe female or the noun of unity; if after anadjective,
it stands for the feminine. In the second part, the various forms are
given in which a word has a feminine termination without such refe-
rence to sex or gender, andherethe'headsthetransliteration. (Compare
e.g. the artic>les >^\ asad, », "lion," &c., p. 41 ; ^' samar, S, "fruit "
&c., p. 209 ; hdrr, S, " hot," &c., p. 268; cjili half, "behind," &c. ;—
ii liilfa-t, "difference of opinion," &c., p. 337.)