س ف ن

From سَفِينَة‎ (safīna, “ship”).

س ف ن • (s-f-n)

1. related to ships

• سَفِينَة‎ (safīna, “ship”)
• سِفَانَة‎ (sifāna, “shipbuilding”)
• سَفَّان‎ (saffān, “shipbuilder”)

Uncertain, potentially borrowed from Middle Persian, compare Persian اپسان‎ (apsân, “whetstone”), Arabic سُنْبَاذَج‎ (sunbāḏaj, “whetstone”). There is also Ancient Greek σφήν (sphḗn, “wedge tool”), Proto-Germanic *spēnuz (“chip, shaving”), from a reconstructed Proto-Indo-European *(s)peh₂- (“chip, shaving, log, length of wood”), whence the English spoon. Likewise there are native Semitic associations with Akkadian 𒊓𒉺𒉡 (sa-pa-nu /sapānu/, “to level, to even out, to flatten, to smooth out”), Akkadian 𒉌𒌓𒌑𒃻𒋤𒋤 (^NA₄U₂.NIG₂.SU₃.SU₃ /sapīnu/, “smoothing-stone, stone used for flattening”), and Aramaic ספנ‎ (səpan, “to fill in empty spaces, to patch up a hold of a ship; hence to pair wood into usable planks”) connected with ship-building, Imperial Aramaic 𐡎𐡐𐡍𐡀‎ (sp̄enā, “plank”), and Aramaic סְפינִתָּא‎ (sǝp̄īntā /ship/).

س ف ن • (s-f-n)

1. related to paring, stripping

• Form I: سَفَنَ‎ (safana, “to pare, to strip off”)
  • Verbal noun: سَفْن‎ (safn)
  • Active participle: سَافِن‎ (sāfin)
  • Passive participle: مَسْفُون‎ (masfūn)
• سَفَن‎ (safan), مِسْفَن‎ (misfan, “adze, paring-knife or other smoothing implement”)

• Corriente, Federico; Pereira, Christophe; Vicente, Angeles, editors (2017) Dictionnaire du faisceau dialectal arabe andalou. Perspectives phraséologiques et étymologiques (in French), Berlin: De Gruyter, page 641
• Dozy, Reinhart Pieter Anne (1881), “س ف ن”, in Supplément aux dictionnaires arabes (in French), volume 2, Leiden: E. J. Brill, pages 659b–660a
• Fraenkel, Siegmund (1886) Die aramäischen Fremdwörter im Arabischen (in German), Leiden: E. J. Brill, pages 216–217
• Freytag, Georg (1833), “س ف ن”, in Lexicon arabico-latinum praesertim ex Djeuharii Firuzabadiique et aliorum Arabum operibus adhibitis Golii quoque et aliorum libris confectum (in Latin), volume 2, Halle: C. A. Schwetschke, page 325b
• Kazimirski, Albin de Biberstein (1860), “س ف ن”, in Dictionnaire arabe-français contenant toutes les racines de la langue arabe, leurs dérivés, tant dans l’idiome vulgaire que dans l’idiome littéral, ainsi que les dialectes d’Alger et de Maroc (in French), volume 1, Paris: Maisonneuve et C^ie, pages 1102–1103
• Lane, Edward William (1863), “س ف ن”, in Arabic-English Lexicon, London: Williams & Norgate, page 1375
• Wehr, Hans (1979), “سفن”, in J. Milton Cowan, editor, A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, 4th edition, Ithaca, NY: Spoken Language Services, →ISBN, page 482