Arabic Words You Unknowingly Use Posted by online Arabic teacher

 "Apricot", "massage", "mean" ... We use these terms on a daily basis without suspecting the richness of their history. Le Figaro invites you to (re) discover it. Online Arabic teacher is the best place to learn Arabic language.

 

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We are far from imagining the origin of the words we use every day. Words that appear absolutely banal, perfectly ordinary. “Mustache”, for example! The term comes from the Italian mostacchio , itself from the Byzantine Greek mustakhion , diminutive of mustac , "upper lip". There is the word "dress" too. Borrowed from the Germain Rouba, “booty” hence “clothing of which someone has been stripped”, specifies Le Trésor de la langue française.

 

Thus, over the centuries, it is quite naturally that Arabic words have gradually integrated the columns of our dictionaries. The eminent lexicologist Jean Pruvost retraces the journey of these words into the French vocabulary in his enlightening work Nos ancêtres les Arabes, ce que notre langue owes them (JC Lattès). Anthology.

 

Tasty words

The sugar we pour on our strawberries, the apricots we gulp down ... Our plates are filled with Arabic words right up to the cup of coffee we swallow. But also, more surprisingly, the sorbets that we lick. “It's a kind of pleasant drink that comes to us from the Levant” , as Richelet defined it in 1680. Ten years later, we find the word in Furetière's Universal Dictionary: “Sorbet. sm A drink which is very common among the Turks, to whom wine is forbidden. It is composed of sugar and lemon flesh” . "Sorbet", therefore, comes from charbat, which designates a drink. Originally, we find it in the form of chourba , a term in popular Arabic which, through Turkish, gave chorbet. Then, finally, sorbetto in Italian. The word entered the French language in 1544, during the Renaissance. It was not until the end of the 18th century, in 1782 to be exact, that "sorbet" designated a "liquor explicitly intended to be converted into ice”.

 

And what about spinach? This dish made more than one child wince ... As Jean Pruvost tells us, "when this plant was introduced by the Arabs in Spain, it was a question of highlighting its therapeutic virtues" . Then, its use became culinary. Let us remember, however, that the term comes from the Eastern Arabic asfanah , from Persian, "then from Andalusian Arabic, isbinâkh , which we find in medieval Latin spinachium but also in Spanish, espinaca " .

 

The muslin, finally. Would you be surprised to learn that this word comes to us from the city of ... Mosul? “On the banks of the Tigris, this city traded among other things in a very fine cotton or woolen cloth, which, while passing through Italy, mossolino , passed into French at the end of the 13th century, giving birth to mosulin , cloth of gold and silk made in Mosul ” . In the middle of the 12th century, and presumably by attraction with the word "moss", mosulin gave "muslin" denoting a "delicate cotton canvas". Little by little, the other name for the paste made from tragacanth, with the addition of lemon juice, became “mousseline”."It is by assimilation that then came the brioches, apples called mousselines, brioches or very light purees”.

 

The words of the body

Who has never asked for a massage after a long day at work? You will no doubt be surprised to know that the word comes from the Arabic massa, “to touch, to feel”. Term which gave the verb "masser" attested in French from 1779. It was not until the nineteenth century that "massage" appeared, especially in medical works. In the 20th century, "massage" took on a "vital dimension" . Thus we speak, from the 1970s, of "cardiac massage".

 

There is a term that is a little less sweet and certainly more familiar: "to fuck ". Relatively recent, "he made his entry in 1890 coming from the sabir of North Africa i-nik ," he made love ", starting from the Arabic nak , of the same meaning" , specifies Jean Pruvost. It was through military slang that the term was introduced into the French language in the sense of "possessing fleshly". When the military was invited by prostitutes across the country, it was not uncommon to hear the phrase "do nik-nik". Not to be confused with the expression "to fuck" which means "to mock, to despise".

 

The words of the moods

You've probably already called someone “nutty”. Understand: "crazy", "crazy", "unconscious". The term comes from the Arabic language of Algeria: mabbhul originally means "idiot". The word transits through African slang in 1830, tells Jean Pruvost and takes "a certain rise in the French language, immortalized in French poetry, to the point of having made them forget their origin”.

 

The “miskin” that we hear in the mouths of the youngest is an Arabic word from which comes the adjective “mean”. Originally, miskin first meant "to be poor". The word then travels to Italy and becomes meschino, before being spelled, in old French, meschin. It then means "young man, servant". It is when "meschin" disappears that "mean" takes on more importance "with first of all the idea of ​​littleness and mediocrity, then from the middle of the 17th century, that of avarice, testifying to an unpleasant parsimony ” . In 1635 appears “meanness” which means “absence of grandeur, of generosity”.

 

There are many of us who “get the blues” sometimes. "Cockroach" comes from the Arabic kâfir, "infidel, unbeliever" then "converted to a religion other than the Muslim religion". Ergo, the notion of hypocrite, remarks Jean Pruvost. If the word has taken on an even more pejorative meaning, it is because of "its final assimilated to the popular suffix -ard, and in the 19th century the word became a familiar synonym of '' mouchard '', especially in the vocabulary of schoolchildren”. To contact us click on online Arabic teacher.