Talk:سبورة
Actual etymology[edit]
For سَبُّورَة (sabbūra) to be “from the root س ب ر” there must first exist a root س ب ر. We read in Fraenkel, Siegmund (1886) Die aramäischen Fremdwörter im Arabischen (in German), Leiden: E. J. Brill, page 261 that مِسْبَار (misbār, “probe”) (variants: مِسْبَر (misbar), سِبَار (sibār)) is a borrowed term from Aramaic, where we have סְבַר (sbar, “to perforate, to cut”), though this exact noun is not found there, and سَبَرَ (sabara) / سَبَّرَ (sabbara, “to explore, to probe, to sound”) is denominal. Then there is nothing left over but سِبْر (sibr, “appearance, habit, manner of being”) which I neither know nor can explain. There is also مَسْبَر (masbar, “internal state of things, intrinsic quality”), maybe this is something one knows after using a probe. Is Fraenkel right? In any case why is سَبُّورَة (sabbūra) related to these other words? Is it so called because one “examines” things on a blackboard? I don’t find anything in Aramaic either. Christian Palestinian Aramaic ܫܦܪ (špr, “to wipe off, to blot out”) seems far-fetched, nor does ܣܦܪ (spr, “related to narration and writing”) look like a hit. The formation seems new however. Some dialectal verbs? This word however exists in dialects where there isn’t anything else in this root, in Iraqi Arabic as in Palestinian Arabic as in Egyptian Arabic as in Moroccan Arabic. Do you have an idea @Profes.I.? Fay Freak (talk) 03:36, 7 April 2019 (UTC)