# Etymology of the word HAZARD



## ᴚǝǝƶɐʍɐɈ

In a couple of earlier posts (under headings LILAC and RACQUET), I showed that you can't trust any of today's currently published English dictionaries to reliably summarize what's known about a word's history. I'm going to do the same again in this post, examining what's known about the etymology of the word HAZARD. The problems with HAZARD are not confined to HAZARD because they arise from poor standards of evidence and methods.



> Merriam-Webster @ M-W.com: Middle English, from Anglo-French hasard, from Old Spanish azar, from Arabic al-zahr the die. First Known Use in English: 14th century.
> Concise OED @ OxfordDictionaries.com: Middle English: from Old French hasard, from Spanish azar, from Arabic az-zahr 'chance, luck', from Persian zār or Turkish zar 'dice'.
> Collins English @ Dictionary.com: Century13 English: from Old French hasard,  from Arabic az-zahr  the die
> Random House @ Dictionary.com: 1250–1300;  ME hasard  < OF, perh. < Ar al-zahr  the die
> Webster's New World @ YourDictionary.com: ME < OFr hasard, game of dice, adventure < ? Ar az-zahr, for Egypt colloq. Ar al-zahr, dice
> American Heritage @ YourDictionary.com: hasard, dice game, from Old French, possibly from Old Spanish azar, possibly from Arabic az-zahr, the gaming die : al-, the + zahr, gaming die.
> Chambers Dict @ Chambers.co.uk: 13c: from French hasard.


Hazard meaning a game of dice is first attested in French around 1150 (spelled ''hasart'') and in English around 1300 -- Ref1, Ref2. The word appears very often in later medieval French and English writings (e.g.). The Spanish ''azar'' is first attested in 1283 and had the same primary meaning as the French and English, i.e. a game of dice -- Ref1. The Arabic ''az-zahr'' or ''al-zahr'' is unattested in Arabic until a report in the early 19th century by a French linguist, Ellious Bocthor, who found it in oral Arabic dialect in Egypt meaning "the dice" -- Ref3, Ref4. (The word is absent in Richardson's Arabic-English Dictionary of 1852, which reflects standard Arabic.) Bocthor's attestation is more than 700 years too late. Nearly 800 years too late. In the centuries leading up to the 19th, Egyptian Arabic borrowed many words from Europe especially from Italian. Italian speakers dominated the seaborne commerce of the Turkish Ottoman empire in and around the Renaissance centuries. Italian was the "lingua franca" of the eastern Mediterranean rim at that time, and many Turkish and Arabic words are from Italian as a consequence. Ernest Weekley's 1921 etymology dictionary in its entry for hazard says the 19th century Egyptian Arabic dialectical ''az-zahr'' (or al-zahr) "is a word of doubtful authority which may have been borrowed from Spanish ''azar'' or from Italian  ''zara'', "a game at dice called hazard"." -- Ref5.

Later in the 19th century, the etymology dictionaries took up Bocthor's ''az-zahr'' word for the purpose of retrofitting it to the Spanish ''azar'' word. It comes with no support from history beyond the fact that Spanish was taking in Arabic words back in the 12th century. A second problem with the etymology is that the Spanish ''azar'' word is not attested until more than a century later than the French ''hasart'' word (1150 verusus 1283). Therefore a Spanish origin proposition for French hasard must be highly uncertain and hypothetical. In records in England, the proper name "Hugo Hasard" occurs in 1167, and a "Walteri Hassard" occurs in 1197 -- Ref2. Those are Norman names I believe. They are unconnected to the game of dice but they show that a wordform "Hasard" could readily be created in (Anglo-Norman) French without Spanish fatherhood. A similar example is in William of Tyre writing in Latin in the 1180s. He writes about a castle or fortified town he variously calls "Hasard", "Hasart" and "Hasarth" -- Ref6. The castle was controlled by people who spoke French as their vernacular languge, as did William of Tyre himself.

The OED says about hazard: "The origin of the French word is uncertain, but its source was probably Arabic. According to William of Tyre, the game took its name from a castle called Hasart or Asart in Palestine, during the siege of which it was invented." The original Latin text of William of Tyre's book is at Ref6. It never mentions "hasard" as a game. Only as a castle. The Latin was later translated into French and the French translator (or someone) inserted the remark that the game "hasard" took its name from the Hasard castle. That happened sometime during the 13th century -- Ref7. Hasard was by then a well-known word for a dice game in France. The insertion is apocryphal (bogus). The OED adds that the Hasard castle in Palestine was called ‘Ain Zarba in Arabic and so the castle's Hasard name was French not Arabic. Other than the apocryphal remark in William of Tyre, the OED offers no evidence for an Arabic source for the French dice game and yet still gratuitously says "its source was probably Arabic". Thus you can't trust the OED either, although the OED is much, much better than the ordinary dictionaries, who only have the space for a single-line summary of a word's etymology.

When I dig down into factual etymology evidence, one word at a time, I find most etymology summaries in today's dictionaries are backed up by good evidence. But a substantial minority are not. The worst aspect in the dictionaries' single-line summaries is a failure to convey uncertainty when uncertainty is very much called for. In the dictionaries quoted at the top of this page, the first three say "hasard" is from Arabic "az-zahr" with no uncertainty. The next three are still objectionable. The American Heritage Dictionary for instance says the European word is "possibly from Arabic az-zahr, the gaming die : al-, the + zahr, gaming die." That statement permits an ordinary reader such as myself with no further knowledge of the situation to mistakenly infer that ''az-zahr'' was a real attested word in medieval Arabic. The Chambers Dictionary, distinct from the others above, says English hazard is from French hasard and doesn't attempt to summarize the word's history back any farther than that. That's the best policy, I argue.


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## artion

A proper thread for the 1st day of the year, for some of us.
 I searched a Greek kind of dictionary (Anonymous "Atakta") of early 19th c. for the word ζάρι (zari)  and its old Gr. form αζάριον (azarion) and found an alternative  etymology from the Gr. οζάριον (ozarion), i.e. small όζος (ozos),  bone,  (_os_ in L.). Compare with the French game _osselet_. Replacement of initial o with a is not unusual in Gr. words, thus, ozari(on) became azari(on).
See "zari & azarion", pp. 141,142:  http://books.google.gr/books?id=K8s...3&ved=0CHkQ6AEwDA#v=onepage&q=αζάριον&f=false
If you ask what is the link between bone and dice: The same or similar  game in ancient Gr. was called αστραγαλοι (plural of astragalus, the  square bone of tarsus), the natural ancestor of the hand-made cube. The  same link survived till today in Greece with the game "κοτσια" (kotsia),  from the word kotsi signifying also the bones of tarsus (ankles). This  kotsi is not new in Gr. but was known at least in the roman period as  "kotton" (κοττον), cube (from the same dictionary, vol. 1, p. 305, http://books.google.gr/books?id=cM8GAAAAQAAJ&pg=PP10&lpg=PP10&dq=%CE%86%CF%84%CE%B1%CE%BA%CF%84%CE%B1+%CF%84%CF%8C%CE%BC%CE%BF%CF%82+1&source=bl&ots=Yd3z4HOdfH&sig=OTNoJ1RsEtGLSjeVewVG-a7zVXM&hl=el&ei=4WgfTeD-Isql8QOCt6GYBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CD4Q6AEwBg#v=onepage&q&f=false  ).


I also looked up this dictionary for "αζαρι" (azari) which gives a good  number of primary sources attesting the game, but I hadn't the time to  check them. It takes some good knowledge of latin and old Greek to read  it. If you are good in latin you may find references to azari well  before 12th c. Please check, "_Glossarium ad scriptores mediae et infimae Graecitatis ...",_ Du Cange, Charles Du Fresne, sieur,1688, page 68:
http://anemi.lib.uoc.gr/php/pdf_pager.php?filename=%2Fvar%2Fwww%2Fanemi-portal%2F%2Fmetadata%2Ff%2F4%2Fb%2Fattached-metadata-01-0000493%2F85778_01.pdf&width=641&height=967&pagestart=1&maxpage=691〈=en&pageno=68&pagenotop=65&pagenobottom=68


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## artion

Oops, I see the last link doe not work. Try to download or view from here:
http://anemi.lib.uoc.gr/search/?dtab=m&search_type=simple&search_help=&display_mode=overview&wf_step=init&show_hidden=0&number=10&keep_number=10&cclterm1=&cclterm2=&cclterm3=&cclterm4=&cclterm5=&cclterm6=&cclterm7=&cclterm8=&cclfield1=&cclfield2=&cclfield3=&cclfield4=&cclfield5=&cclfield6=&cclfield7=&cclfield8=&cclop1=&cclop2=&cclop3=&cclop4=&cclop5=&cclop6=&cclop7=&isp=&search_coll[metadata]=1&&stored_cclquery=creator%3D%28Du+Cange%2C+Charles+Du+Fresne%2C%29&skin=&rss=0&display_mode=detail&ioffset=1&offset=1&number=1&keep_number=10&old_offset=1&search_help=detail


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## Hulalessar

I found this explanation here: http://etimologias.dechile.net/?azar

_*Azar*

La palabra azar viene del árabe الزهر (az-zahr) que significaba primero "flor" y luego se empleó para la marca que daba la suerte en la taba, que era la rótula de un mamífero mediano, como una oveja o una cabra. En la taba, antecesor del dado cuadrado, se marcaba con una pequeña flor uno de sus lados, que era el que daba la suerte. En el juego que en árabe y otras lenguas de Oriente se llamó نرد (nard), en español tablas reales, en francés tric-trac y en inglés backgammon, el dado se llama زهرة النرد (zahrat an-nard), literalmente "la flor de las tablas reales". El uso de الزهر (az-zahr) con el significado de dado hizo que en castellano se introdujera el arabismo azar con el significado del latín alea._

For those unfamiliar with Spanish, it says that the primary meaning of_ az-zahr_ is "flower" and that the side of a knucklebone that indicated luck was marked with a flower. (In modern Spanish _azahar _means (orange) blossom.)


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## artion

Original source?


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## miguel89

artion said:


> Original source?


It's in the RAE's dictionary:

*azar.* (Del ár. hisp. *azzahr, y este del ár. zahr, dado1, literalmente 'flores').

*azahar.* (Del ár. hisp. azzahár, y este del ár. clás. zahr, flores).


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## ᴚǝǝƶɐʍɐɈ

In medieval and modern Arabic, al-zahr (pronounced az-azar) means flower. The official dictionary of the Spanish language, the DRAE, is reporting that the medieval Spanish "azar" meaning "hazard" comes from medieval Arabic "zahr" meaning flower because part of the dice (or another dice-like gaming object) was decorated with a drawing of a flower. I haven't read the Spanish etymology books, but in the English and French books I've read, I haven't come across any mention of any hard evidence that supports the flower theory, neither on the medieval Spanish side or on the medieval Arabic side of the equation. The fact that the DRAE reports this theory to be true should not be interpreted to mean that it is actually true. The DRAE's standards of evidence are no better and no worse than those of the English dictionaries. You have to see the actual evidence before you can extend any credence to the theory. That's my point once again: you can't trust the summary conclusions in the dictionaries.


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## Frank06

ᴚǝǝƶɐʍɐɈ said:


> That's my point once again: you can't trust the summary conclusions in the dictionaries.


It's an incredibly naive point you make once again. You cherry-pick some examples, then you start a rant and then you conclude that those slash no dictionaries can be trusted in their entirety. I'm sorry, but this is one big off the wall and pointless "conclusion".

You do make valid points about the sometimes speculative nature of some etymological explanations (even if it is not explicitely marked as such), but that is so inherent to the endeavour of that kind of dictionaries that it can only be labelled (again) as kicking in an open door. Everybody who already had a look at two or more etymological dictionaries has noticed that some explanations differ and hence -- by sheer logic, rather than by starting a crusade -- that some etymologies are uncertain, even if not marked as such. Duh-uh. 

If you cannot deal with the fact that etymology is not an exact science, if you cannot grasp that editors make choices (which they probably can justify, but which they probably cannot publish in full given the very (limited) nature of the medium), then you can keep on ranting until hell freezes over.

You could do three things about it:
1. Stop using those dictionaries!
or
2. Write to the editors of those dictionaries.
or
3. Do something (useful) about it, viz. go to a decent library and sort out the sources used in those dictionaries yourself, search for other sources and correct those items. I do realise that this takes slightly more time than copying and pasting and pressing the send button, but you would make this world a better place. Good luck! 

Frank


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## Hulalessar

Just for the record all the DRAE says is that _azar_ comes "from Arabic zahr, dice, literally 'flowers'". It is the site I mentioned that says that knucklebones used to be marked with a small flower on one side. Whether that is the case I have no idea. I just comment that it would be an odd thing for someone to make up. If it is the case, then, using Occam's razor, it would seem to explain why the Arabic for "flowers" and "dice" is the same word. And, still assuming it is the case and applying the razor again, is it not likely to be the case that "hazard" meaning "chance" comes from a word meaning a dice, rather than from the name of a castle?

As Frank says, etymology is not an exact science. Words are slippery customers. Just as etymology should not be used to try and work out what a word means at any moment in time, so equally we ought not to be too fixed on semantics to try out work out a word's etymology. ǝǝƶɐʍɐ's post make interesting reading, but for me in the end they are _too _detailed. Ideally etymology would be an exact science, but in the end, although it has to take account of things like the earliest extant occurrence of a word, it cannot forget that written records tend to reflect established use. Whilst folk etymologies must be resisted, intuition and speculation have to come into it.


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## ᴚǝǝƶɐʍɐɈ

Hulalessar said:


> all the DRAE says is that _azar_ comes "from Arabic zahr, dice, literally 'flowers'". It is the site I mentioned that says that knucklebones used to be marked with a small flower on one side. Whether that is the case I have no idea. I just comment that it would be an odd thing for someone to make up. If it is the case, then, using Occam's razor, it would seem to explain why the Arabic for "flowers" and "dice" is the same word.



Arabic has many words for "dice" but az-zahr is not one of them except  for the isolated finding by the French linguist Bocthor in 19th century  Arabic dialect in Egypt. When *Hulalessar* says the flowers story _"would seem to explain why the Arabic for "flowers" and "dice" is the same word"_, I believe what he meant to say was it would seem to explain why the _Spanish_ for "flowers" and "dice" is the same word. See the quote posted above by *Miguel89*  from the DRAE, where the Spanish for orange blossom, azahar (which is  certainly from Arabic az-zahr = flower) is associated with the Spanish  for dice.

It is not an odd thing for someone to make up a story like the "flowers implies dice" story -- in fact the dictionaries have loads and loads of this sort of thing. The general method involved is (a) assume Spanish azar is from an Arabic word, (b) find candidate words in Arabic that are phonetically similar to Spanish azar, (c) for each of the phonetically similar word in Arabic, imagine how the word could be associated semanically with the Spanish azar (using brainstorming imagination), (d) select the candidate that looks the best fit overall, phonetically and semantically. That is not an evidence-based method. It is imagination-based. It sometimes delivers a good solid result. But more often it results in a mere coherent story, a fable.

Once again, my argument is that reporting a summary etymology, such as from the DRAE, is worthless. It is strictly necessary, I argue, to report the facts and evidence and specific reasoning that underlie the summary. Without that, the report is liable to be retelling a fable.


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## rayloom

ᴚǝǝƶɐʍɐɈ said:


> Arabic has many words for "dice" but az-zahr is not one of them except  for the isolated finding by the French linguist Bocthor in 19th century  Arabic dialect in Egypt.



Arabic has 2 main words for dice, al-zahr (pronounced az-zahr) being the commoner word. An older word used is al-nard (which Arabic dictionaries say is originally from Persian nardashir) which isn't used commonly. Even when it is used, the word zahr is used alongside because it's commoner and well-known.


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## ᴚǝǝƶɐʍɐɈ

rayloom said:


> Arabic has 2 main words for dice, al-zahr (pronounced az-zahr) being the commoner word. An older word used is al-nard (which Arabic dictionaries say is originally from Persian nardashir) which isn't used commonly. Even when it is used, the word zahr is used alongside because it's commoner and well-known.



I just found out that modern Arabic does have zahr as a dice. So I'll have to state again more precisely what I know about the use of "zahr" in Arabic. _First_, ''Dictionnaire Étymologique Des Mots Français D'Origine Orientale'' by Devic (1876) explicity says the word is absent from medieval Arabic writings and is recorded for the first time in Arabic by Bocthor's dialect dictionary in the early 19th century. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) likewise says about hazard: "Mahn proposes vulgar [i.e. dialectical] Arab az-zahr or az-zar ‘die’ (Bocthor); but early evidence for this sense is wanting." I also have two large Arabic-to-Latin dictionaries of medieval creation date, which I downloaded at Archive.org, and they don't have the word ''zahr'' meaning dice. One of them is the 13th century Vocabulista in Arabico which translates Arabic zahr as "flower" and also as "light" (latin "lucere") (page 113). _Second_, the giant Richardson's Arabic-English dictionary of 1852 translates zahr as a flower only. If you download Richardson's dictionary and search within it for the English word "dice", you'll find about a dozen different Arabic words for dice. _Third_, today's Arabic-English dictionaries at wordreference.com, translate.google.com, and babylon.com all give Arabic "al-nard" as the primary translation of English dice. But they do also mention zahr as a secondary translation, which I hadn't noticed when I took a quick look at translate.google com earlier. So I thank rayloom for the correction.


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## ancalimon

zar means dice in Turkish too. It also means coating, skin, hymen, etc.

It might be related to "sar" which means to wrap, coil up, surround, siege, etc. (seeing the dice is surrounded with numbers)


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## Hulalessar

I certainly did not mean to suggest that the Spanish for "dice" and "flowers" is the same, since it is not. There is the Spanish word _azahar_ meaning orange blossom, which no one seems to doubt comes from the Arabic for "flowers". There is also the Spanish word _azar_ meaning "chance", which may or may not come from one of the Arabic words for "dice" which also means "flowers". Whether or not there is any connection between _az-zahr_ meaning "dice" and _az-zahr_ meaning "flowers" is not really relevant to determining whether _azar_ comes from _az-zahr_.

Forgetting flowers, where does that leave us? We have a Spanish word meaning chance that does not come from Latin and an Arabic word for dice that is similar to that Spanish word. If you cannot find the origin of a Spanish word in Latin, the next place to look is Arabic. If you find an Arabic word for "dice" which is similar to the Spanish for "chance" then you can be forgiven for not looking further. The fact that _az-zahr_ is not recorded early enough is unhelpful, but not fatal. If the word was indeed dialectal or colloquial one would almost expect it not to be recorded. If a dictionary has twelve words for dice you can bet there are at least a dozen more (cf all the words available in English to describe the different sizes and types of marble). Dialectal and colloquial words can make it into the mainstream (cf French _tête _and _jambe_).


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## ᴚǝǝƶɐʍɐɈ

ancalimon said:


> zar means dice in Turkish too.



According to my sources, the Turkish zar is "pure Turkish": "Persian écrit zâr, qui figure dans Meninski comme purement Turc". -- ref.

I said earlier that Arabic zahr = "dice" could be borrowed from Italian "zara" = "game of dice". But another good possibility is Arabic zahr = "dice" is borrowed from the Turkish zar = "dice" (which in turn is either pure Turkish or from the Italian). The Concise OED is another source saying Arabic zahr = "dice" was from Turkish zar or Persian zar = dice. I regard the presence of the Turkish and Persian word as another sign that the Arabic zahr = "dice" was not in medieval Arabic. At about the year 1150, the year when "hasard" is first attested as a dice game in French, the Turks had not yet conquered Arabic-speaking lands and words from their language had not entered Arabic in any significant number. It was later, when the Ottoman Empire got established, that Turkish words had more opportunity to enter Arabic.

Since there's no sign whatsoever that az-zahr = "dice" was in medieval Arabic, where could the medieval Spanish azar arise from? My own expectation would be: from French hasard, which, repeating myself, is attested more than a century earlier than the Spanish azar. The Spanish is first attested at about the same time as the English, i.e. 1283 Spanish versus circa 1300 English. Everyone agrees that Italian azzardo is from French. The Italian 'zara' is not so clear, but could come from the same French root too. The word appears in medieval Latin spelled with and without the 'd' -- azardum, azarrum.


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## ancalimon

ᴚǝǝƶɐʍɐɈ said:


> According to my sources, the Turkish zar is "pure Turkish": "Persian écrit zâr, qui figure dans Meninski comme purement Turc". -- ref.
> 
> Since there's no sign whatsoever that az-zahr = "dice" was in medieval Arabic, where could the medieval Spanish azar arise from? My own expectation would be: from French hasard, which, repeating myself, is attested more than a century earlier than the Spanish azar.



Where did French hasard come from? Maybe Langue d'oc? 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occitan_language

Etruscan dice comes to my mind.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etruscan_numerals

The article I've read mentioned some attempted decipherments of the dice here:
http://www.sonsuz.us/?q=node/1897

Of course these are uncharted lands but it's the closest link I can get.


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## artion

One more theory that takes us to the Roman antiquity. The Gr. *azaria* comes from the game _tessera_ (four) or the players of dice "_tesserarii_". 
I found it in this old french etymol. dictionary:
Gilles Ménage (1750), Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue françoise, vol. 2, p. 23, word *hazard*. Online http://books.google.gr/books?id=UoM...2&ved=0CB8Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=azardum&f=false

He gives several theories, including a castle in Syria, but also cites a late roman writer, Ammien Marcellin (c. 330- c. 400 AD):
"_Quidam ex iis, licet rari, aleatorum vocabulum declinantes, ideoque se cupientes appellari *tesserarios*_". i.e. if I understand well, they were calling _tesserarii_ the players of the dice game (alea in L.). The explanation of azar as tessera is also given by an earlier glossarium that I posted above.
Notice that the dice is called des or dez in other languages. It is possible that abbreviating the tessera others kept the first part and others the latter part of the word.


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## Frank06

artion said:


> One more theory that takes us to the Roman antiquity. The Gr. *azaria* comes from the game _tessera_ (four) or the players of dice "_tesserarii_".
> I found it in this old french etymol. dictionary:
> Gilles Ménage (1750), Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue françoise, vol. 2, p. 23, word *hazard*. Online http://books.google.gr/books?id=UoM...2&ved=0CB8Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=azardum&f=false


The 1750s... Aah, those were the golden days of etymological research.


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## Forero

Do two sigmas ever make a zeta?


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## artion

Forero said:


> Do two sigmas ever make a zeta?


Everything goes in spoken languages, especially if you don't know the spelling or you don't care about it. Actually in ancient Greece there were no generally accepted rules of spelling. Even today the tessera is written either with two or one sigma. In some ancient Gr. dialects double T was used instead of double S (Thalatta, thalatta). 

Btw, "arabic" and other non-european origins have one advantage: You cannot pose questions like the above, let alone any research on original sources. A bias that makes them convenient for any etymologist.


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## Forero

artion said:


> Everything goes in spoken languages, especially if you don't know the spelling or you don't care about it. Actually in ancient Greece there were no generally accepted rules of spelling. Even today the tessera is written either with two or one sigma. In some ancient Gr. dialects double T was used instead of double S (Thalatta, thalatta).
> 
> Btw, "arabic" and other non-european origins have one advantage: You cannot pose questions like the above, let alone any research on original sources. A bias that makes them convenient for any etymologist.


Let me rephrase. Is there any native Greek word in which the ss or tt alternates with or has been replaced with a Z?


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## artion

I can't think of many for the moment. Possibly the name Melize from melissa (honey-bee) (http://www.whatalovelyname.com/Melize).  We have also the opposite: mass/massive - from μάζα (maza). But note  that double sigma exists only between vowels. If the first vowel is eliminated (as for example in new Gr.  _saranta_ (forty) from tessarakonta http://strongsnumbers.com/greek/5062.htm) we don't have a double but a single sigma which easily becomes Z in some languages (less frequent in english, possibly by the mediation of another language, but  Zion from Σιών (in Septuagint), zero from sifr). I think German is more prone to create Z out of S (zucker - sugar, zu- from the Gr. preposition συν).


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## origumi

artion said:


> I can't think of many for the moment. Possibly the name Melize from melissa (honey-bee) (http://www.whatalovelyname.com/Melize). We have also the opposite: mass/massive - from μάζα (maza). But note that double sigma exists only between vowels. If the first vowel is eliminated (as for example in new Gr. _saranta_ (forty) from tessarakonta http://strongsnumbers.com/greek/5062.htm) we don't have a double but a single sigma which easily becomes Z in some languages (less frequent in english, possibly by the mediation of another language, but Zion from Σιών (in Septuagint), zero from sifr). I think German is more prone to create Z out of S (zucker - sugar, zu- from the Gr. preposition συν).


Don't you mix shifts that occured in different times and places, while actually trying to prove that written s (or double s) can become written z?

sifr -> zero is Arabic to European Languages and English
Tsion -> Sion / Zion is Hebrew to Hellenistic Greek and other Europaean Languages and English (the ts is explained here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsade)
sugar -> zucker is ? to German
Melissa -> Melize is Greek to ? to American English


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## artion

origumi said:


> Don't you mix shifts that occured in different times and places, while actually trying to prove that written s (or double s) can become written z?
> 
> sifr -> zero is Arabic to European Languages and English
> Tsion -> Sion / Zion is Hebrew to Hellenistic Greek and other Europaean Languages and English (the ts is explained here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsade)
> sugar -> zucker is ? to German
> Melissa -> Melize is Greek to ? to American English


 
I am not trying to prove anything. I am only reminding that single or double s may become Z, with or without the mediation of spoken language. This is not a local or instant phenomenon but happens in the europe at least from Middle Ages till today. The double S is historical spelling and doesn't differ in pronounciation from the single s. In some cases a sigma even becomes a double z. e.g. Italian _mezzo_ from from med. Gr. _μισό_ (miso, but pronounced misso)< anc. Gr. ήμισυ (half). 
For the newly literate europeans of M.Ages some Greek words sounded as foreign as the arabic or hebrew and all could undergo the same treatment.


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## berndf

artion said:


> ...we don't have a double but a single sigma which easily becomes Z in some languages (less frequent in english, possibly by the mediation of another language, but Zion from Σιών (in Septuagint), zero from sifr). I think German is more prone to create Z out of S (zucker - sugar, zu- from the Gr. preposition συν).


The question was





Forero said:


> ...Is there any native Greek word in which the ss or tt alternates with or has been replaced with a Z?



but all these things have little to do with Greek:

_Zion_ is a transliteration of ציון and not of Σιών and "Z" is used because the medieval and modern pronunciation of the letter צ is [ts] and not [ s ]; classical pronunciation was [sˤ], a sound not present in Greek and therefore approximated by Σ in the Septuagint.
Likewise, the Arabic word for _Zero_ is صفر with an [sˤ] in the beginning, not with an [ S ]. German _Ziffer_, French _chiffre_ and English _cipher_ are also derived from صفر.
German _Zucker_ is related Italian _zucchero_ and Spanish _azucar_ and is not derived from French _sucre_ or English _sugar_. Side-by-side versions with "s" and with "z" are so old in European languages that it is extremely unlikely that one should be derived from the other. They are most likely independent imports. In this case, the Arabic word really starts with [ s ] and not with [sˤ]; the Persian word starts with a [ʃ]. Grimm opines that the versions with _z-_ are derived from Arabic and the versions with _s-_ directly from Persian from where Arabic got it. In the end, I think, we don't know how the two versions came into being.
The German preposition _zu_ (pronounced [tsu:]) is derived by palatalization from earlier West-Germanic _tu/to_ and is cognate to English _to_.
-------

But... remind me why this all should be important. What we all agree about is the French origin the debate is only about where French got it from and the predominant French spelling has always been "hasard" or "hasart", with an "s", not with a "z".


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## ᴚǝǝƶɐʍɐɈ

berndf said:


> German _Zucker_ is related Italian _zucchero_ and Spanish _azucar_ and is not derived from French _sucre_ or English _sugar_. Side-by-side versions with "s" and with "z" are so old in European languages that it is extremely unlikely that one should be derived from the other. They are most likely independent imports. In this case, the Arabic word really starts with [ s ] and not with [sˤ]; the Persian word starts with a [ʃ]. Grimm opines that the versions with _z-_ are derived from Arabic and the versions with _s-_ directly from Persian from where Arabic got it. In the end, I think, we don't know how the two versions came into being.... But... remind me why this all should be important.


It's not important. But still I can't resist adding that among the very earliest records of "sugar" in English are these entries in the account  books of an abbey in Durham (situated inland in northern England): year 1302 "Zuker Marok", 1309 "succre  marrokes", 1310 "Couker de Marrok", 1312 "sucore de Roche", 1316 "Zucar de Cypr[us]", 1333 "zukur", 1373 "Sugour". There you see both 'z' and 's' spellings in the same abbey around the same time. Those and other  early English spellings of sugar are online at the Middle English Dictionary. "Marok" means "imported from Morocco". The notion that any Western European language was borrowing the sugar word (or any other word) directly from Persian in the late middle ages in not at all plausible. Any Persian word would've had to come through the intermediation of Arabic, or, less likely, through intermediation of Greek or Turkish.


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## Forero

My question was about the plausibility of _azaria_ coming from _tessara_/_tettara_. I just seems to me more likely that _azaria_ comes from the Arabic than from _tessera_/_tettara_.

The French intervocal _s_ has sounded like _z_ as far back as Vulgar Latin, I think. French spells Greek _z_ words with _z_ but it spells Semitic _Elisabeth_ with _s_. (I know this is not news to anyone, but I thought it needed to be said.)

Personally I have no idea who got _hazard_ from whom, but neither the "castle" theory nor the "tessera" theory makes sense to me without some filling in of the improbable gap(s).


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## ireney

Modern Greek etymological dictionaries seem to all agree that "ζάρι" (Greek word for "dice") comes from the Arabic word.


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## berndf

Forero said:


> The French intervocal _s_ has sounded like _z_ as far back as Vulgar Latin, I think.


But "z" was not [z] as in modern English but [dz] or [ts] as in Italian or German. This was also the case in Old French.


Forero said:


> French spells Greek _z_ words with _z_


For obvious reasons. After all, the very purpose of the Latin "Z" was to transcribe the Greek Zeta.


Forero said:


> but it spells Semitic _Elisabeth_ with _s_.


The Hebrew original letter is שׁ /ʃ/ which became s /s/ in Latin because /ʃ/ didn't exist in Latin (nor in Greek) which in turn became s /z/ in Vulgar Latin.



Forero said:


> Personally I have no idea who got _hazard_ from whom, but neither the "castle" theory nor the "tessera" theory makes sense to me without some filling in of the improbable gap(s).


Agreed.


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## berndf

ireney said:


> Modern Greek etymological dictionaries seem to all agree that "ζάρι" (Greek word for "dice") comes from the Arabic word.


I guess that settles the matter.


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## artion

berndf said:


> I guess that settles the matter.


 
Yes, if somebody show us at least one Greek "etymological" dictionary that did not copy from others and did a 10% of the original research we did here.

So, in order not to weary moderators any more, we may close with a phrase from the first post by  "ǝǝƶɐʍɐ" whom I thank for this interesting thread:

"_The Arabic ''az-zahr'' or ''al-zahr'' is unattested in Arabic until a report in the early 19th century _"


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## berndf

artion said:


> Yes, if somebody show us at least one Greek "etymological" dictionary that did not copy from others and did a 10% of the original research we did here.


I should have expressed myself more clearly: If we had positive evidence for Greek _azaria_ coming from _tessara_/_tettara _then _tessara_/_tettara_ would also be a prominent candidate for the etymology of the _Hasard _in French. Since we obviously don't, we are back at the beginning: Arabic is the most likely source by virtue of Occam's razor (= the simplest solution) but we don't really know.


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## rayloom

artion said:


> "_The Arabic ''az-zahr'' or ''al-zahr'' is unattested in Arabic until a report in the early 19th century _"



I might have gone through the references really quickly, but that's one claim they didn't make.
It was more like: al-zahr is unattested in Classical Arabic dictionaries.

That actually doesn't surprise me, Classical Arabic dictionaries didn't make that much of an effort to preserve what they perceived as "unclassical", or are unattested (with alternate meanings) in Classical Arabic literature.

To make a claim like: the word is not attested (with that meaning) in Arabic, one would have to go through the vast Arabic literature of Medieval times to make such a claim. Unfortunately I haven't the time nor the resources at the moment to carry-on such a search.
A simple google search wouldn't suffice also to make such a claim!

I also feel the claim itself is also contradictory; I mean would you  believe that  this commonly used Arabic word (even if it were borrowed  let's assume), and is present in  many of the surrounding languages,  would only be dated to 19th  century Egypt for example?!



An extreme example I remember, is the word sharrag (as it occurs in  Najdi and Badawi Arabic). It's used there to mean "headed towards the  desert", and if you search all the Classical Arabic dictionaries you  won't find this meaning, even though the use of the word with this  meaning is attested in Ancient North Arabian inscriptions, and has been  used thus till this day, while failing to ever appear in any Classical  dictionary for all this time!!

I'll cite an excerpt from an article written by MCA McDonald in the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages (The Ancient Languages of Syria, Palestine, and Arabia) if that's ok:

"For instance, the word ʼs2rq (found in Safaitic) has traditionally been translated “he went east,” based on Classical Arabic šarraqa. However, it is clear from the texts that their authors used ʼs2rq in the same way as the modern bedouins of the same area use šarraq, in the sense of “he migrated to the inner desert,” regardless of whether that meant traveling north, south, east, or west"

It can be found in page 220.


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## artion

Thanks Rayloom, this was most helpful. I know that Arabic (rather, literature in Arabic script) is vast, hard to access and sometimes hard to interpret. That's why I cannot believe that some European did research and found this word in medieval Arabic manuscripts. May I repeat my belief that etymologists easily adopt the "Arabic" (or Sanskrit) scenario for words that cannot trace in Latin or Nordic languages. My experience is that a good part of those "Arabic origins" are actually Greek long forgotten in obscure dictionaries, sometimes distorted and re-introduced to Europe via Turkish. 
But some of the Western etymology is about to be re-examined soon. Nowadays many old books are getting digitlized and accessible in the web and classical etymological dicctionaries are becaming surpassed and outdated. In phorums like this you may easily find pioneering work.


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## berndf

artion said:


> *My experience *is that a good part of those "Arabic origins" are actually Greek long forgotten in obscure dictionaries, sometimes distorted and re-introduced to Europe via Turkish.


Interesting. Were you there when this happened? Nobody denies, Arabic borrowed from Greek but this didn't happen at a large scale. If I understand Rayloom correctly, his point was that historical Arabic dictionaries ignored words which existed in other Arabic dialect but not in the Quraysh dialect on which classical Arabic is based.

I think most scholars agree that the vast majority of Indo-European roots which can be found in historical Arabic dialects were imported through Persian and not Greek.


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## origumi

artion said:


> Thanks Rayloom, this was most helpful. I know that Arabic (rather, literature in Arabic script) is vast, hard to access and sometimes hard to interpret. That's why I cannot believe that some European did research and found this word in medieval Arabic manuscripts.


You take rayloom's interesting note that _zahr_ is likely to have existed in classical Arabic, and use it to claim that Western scholars who say that Arabic _zahr_ is the source for the discussed words are mistaken... because they are not familiar enough with Arabic classical literature. Sounds rather incoherent.


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## ᴚǝǝƶɐʍɐɈ

In year 1505 Pedro de Alcala wrote a 400-page Spanish-Arabic dictionary whose Arabic vocabulary reflects Maghrebi Arabic, the Arabic that medieval Spanish borrowed words from. Downloadable at Archive.org. It translates Spanish "dado" (English dice) as Arabic ''nard'' and also as Arabic ''qimār''. 1505 would've been more than 350 years too late if an Arabic ''zahr'' = "dice" had been present, but the fact that ''zahr'' was not present is another sign that ''zahr'' wasn't in Arabic in medieval Andalusia.

As said many times now, the earliest record of ''zahr'' = "dice" is in _Egyptian_ Arabic, not Maghrebi. I challenge rayloom to give us an attestation of ''zahr'' in _Maghrebi_ that is earlier than the early 19th century. The current a failure to find of ''zahr'' in Maghrebi dated earlier than the Egyptian lends support to the view that ''zahr'' was borrowed post medievally from Turkish or Italian.


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## Frank06

artion said:


> May I repeat my belief that etymologists easily adopt the "Arabic" (or Sanskrit)


Sanskrit is a straw man argument here, unless one speaks about 19th century dictionaries.


> scenario for words that cannot trace in Latin or Nordic languages.


But the travesty you have been suggesting here and in other threads isn't really an improvement: as long as the word "Greek" appears in the explanation, it seems to be okay for you. Even if that takes a completely  forgotten etymological dictionary and a dodgy, off-the-wall methodology to "prove" your Greek point.  
That may be good enough (and admittedly, funny enough) for an otherwise goofy film like My Big Fat Greek Wedding, but here we are at EHL, not at the movies.


> Greek long forgotten in obscure dictionaries


Obscure, long forgotten, hopelessly out-of-date. And not without a reason.
Anyway, it's been a long time that one single thread had so many references to old dictionaries...


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## ᴚǝǝƶɐʍɐɈ

rayloom said:


> al-zahr is unattested in Classical Arabic dictionaries. That actually doesn't surprise me, Classical Arabic dictionaries didn't make that much of an effort to preserve what they perceived as "unclassical", or are unattested (with alternate meanings) in Classical Arabic literature.



Earlier I linked to the large 13th century Latin-Arabic dictionary "Vocabulista in Arabico". It was produced in Spain by a native Spanish speaker. It is not a Classical Arabic dictionary. Rather, it reflects Maghrebi and Spanish Arabic. That link again is here. Another large non-classical Arabic dictionary produced in Spain in medieval times is the following.  It's a Latin-Arabic dictionary dating from the 12th century. Online at Archive.org here. In Latin the word "alea" meant "dice". This dictionary translates "alea" as Arabic شطرنج which means "chess" not "dice". So I think this dictionary is not of high quality. Nevertheless it's a non-classical Arabic dictionary produced in Spain in the 12th century that doesn't appear to have the "zahr" word (I haven't read the whole book, and I can't search the text for Arabic alphabet chars). Another large Latin-Arabic dictionary at Archive.org is Thesaurus arabico-syro-latinus. This dates from 1630. It says on its front pages that it was produced by Christians intending to propagate Christian faith among Syriac and Arabic speakers, so I'd expect it to be unafraid to use non-classical Arabic. On pages 152-153 it lists words connected with games, and gives two words for dice, neither of which is zahr. (BTW, the back of the book has a convenient index of the Latin words translated.) I also linked earlier to the large Pedro de Alcala 1505 Spanish-Arabic  dictionary, which once again isn't a classical Arabic either. That link again is  here.



rayloom said:


> I also feel the claim itself is also contradictory; I mean would you  believe that  this commonly used Arabic word (even if it were borrowed  let's assume), and is present in  many of the surrounding languages,  would only be dated to 19th  century Egypt for example?!



I said twice earlier that Richardson's Arabic-English dictionary  year 1810  edition and  year 1852  edition have no ''zahr" meaning dice. Richardson's is very  comprehensive and the absence of "zahr" cannot be an oversight because  the 1852 edition is a complete re-do of the 1810 edition by different  authors, and the 1852 edition is far bigger than the 1810. On the basis of Richardson's alone, I can confidently assume that the commonness of today's Arabic "zahr" is a recent development.


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## Frank06

ᴚǝǝƶɐʍɐɈ said:


> Earlier I linked to the large 13th century Latin-Arabic dictionary "Vocabulista in Arabico". It was produced in Spain by a native Spanish speaker. It is not a Classical Arabic dictionary. Rather, it reflects Maghrebi and Spanish Arabic. That link again is here. Another large non-classical Arabic dictionary produced in Spain in medieval times is the following.  It's a Latin-Arabic dictionary dating from the 12th century. Online at Archive.org here. In Latin the word "alea" meant "dice". This dictionary translates "alea" as Arabic شطرنج which means "chess" not "dice". So I think this dictionary is not of high quality. Nevertheless it's a non-classical Arabic dictionary produced in Spain in the 12th century that doesn't appear to have the "zahr" word (I haven't read the whole book, and I can't search the text for Arabic alphabet chars). Another large Latin-Arabic dictionary at Archive.org is Thesaurus arabico-syro-latinus. This dates from 1630. It says on its front pages that it was produced by Christians intending to propagate Christian faith among Syriac and Arabic speakers, so I'd expect it to be unafraid to use non-classical Arabic. On pages 152-153 it lists words connected with games, and gives two words for dice, neither of which is zahr. (BTW, the back of the book has a convenient index of the Latin words translated.) I also linked earlier to the large Pedro de Alcala 1505 Spanish-Arabic  dictionary, which once again isn't a classical Arabic either. That link again is  here.
> 
> 
> 
> I said twice earlier that Richardson's Arabic-English dictionary  year 1810  edition and  year 1852  edition have no ''zahr" meaning dice. Richardson's is very  comprehensive and the absence of "zahr" cannot be an oversight because  the 1852 edition is a complete re-do of the 1810 edition by different  authors, and the 1852 edition is far bigger than the 1810. On the basis of Richardson's alone, I can confidently assume that the commonness of today's Arabic "zahr" is a recent development.


Nope, we don't have to google and search online dictionaries from which the copyrights are expired. 
We have to go through the (undoubtedly) vast body of _primary texts_ in Arabic from that period. But I think that, for us, slightly lazy armchair internet etymologists, the former is easier than the latter. 

Frank

PS: For the last few days, I have been searching for a text, a kind of guidelines on how to conduct proper etymological research. The orginal text is written in German (I'm sure of that) and it contained 30 something (? less sure about that) points to keep in mind. I think I have already posted it once in EHL (in pdf format), but I cannot find it back. 
I'll keep on searching for that text, also because it's a good antidote against the Google-esque nature of the search methods suggested in this thread.


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## Flaminius

Frank06 said:


> PS: For the last few days, I have been searching for a text, a kind of guidelines on how to conduct proper etymological research. The orginal text is written in German (I'm sure of that) and it contained 30 something (? less sure about that) points to keep in mind. I think I have already posted it once in EHL (in pdf format), but I cannot find it back.


Is it the list that you mentioned here?  Unfortunately I could not check the file due to the busy server or something.


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## Frank06

Hi Flaminius,

First of all, thank you very much!!


Flaminius said:


> Is it the list that you mentioned here? Unfortunately I could not check the file due to the busy server or something.


I tried the link today and it works. That's indeed the checklist I was looking for (okay, the English translation .
It's obvious that the real thing goes far beyond a google search.

Groetjes,

Frank


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## artion

Forero said:


> My question was about the plausibility of _azaria_ coming from _tessara_/_tettara_.


 
If you don't mind me returning to this thread, I found a 4th BC attestation on how _tessera_ (or _tessara_) becomes _essera_ (_essara_) (which is half the way to azaria:
Amphis, an Athenian comedian of 4th c. BC. In the comedy "Planos" comments on the rude behaviour of the fishermen (my translation to english):

_"It's a thousand times easier to meet a general, _
_to speak and get an answer from them, _
_.... than from those damn fishermen in the market-place._
_...._
_If you take something from his bench and ask the price, _
_...first he looks down without speaking ..._
_and then, *whithout telling the words complete,*_
_*but cutting a syllable* (answers): "*esseris* 'bolus it is"._
_- "and this grouper?" - " 'cto 'bolus". (eight obolus)_
_This is what you have to hear if you buy fish." (*)_



I expect that the same you could hear by a group of dice-players enjoying the money earned earlier on selling fish (or whatever), oblivious of the "linguistic" rules that some westerners would invent 24 centuries later.

(*) Original translation to new Gr. by Th. K. Stephanopoulos, prof. of Anc. Greek Philology at the University of Patras, Greece)


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## Forero

I am not calling _tessara_ to _azaria_ impossible, but, from what we have so far, I don't see a very strong theory there. The Arabic theory is serious competition, especially when qualified with a "probably" or a "possibly".

It is the _ss_ to _z_ part that I was asking about.

I read somewhere that what was _ss_ in some dialects and _tt_ in others (as in _tessara_/_tettara_) was actually _ts_ in some places. This _ts _is rather close to the old _z_ (pronounced as _sd_, _zd_, or _dz_), but do we have any evidence of _ss_/_tt_ alternating with _z_ around the time in question? (Or did that fisherman ever say anything like _'gdo_ for _'cto_?)


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## artion

Forero said:


> It is the _ss_ to _z_ part that I was asking about.
> 
> I read somewhere that what was _ss_ in some dialects and _tt_ in others (as in _tessara_/_tettara_) was actually _ts_ in some places. This _ts _is rather close to the old _z_ (pronounced as _sd_, _zd_, or _dz_), but do we have any evidence of _ss_/_tt_ alternating with _z_ around the time in question?



I resisted to posting this hypothesis of mine earlier - so as to avoid more negative critiques - but if you are interested in the topic you may examine the possibility that italian pezzo and spanish peso are connected with the ancient Gr. πεσσός/πεττός (pessos/pettos), the pieces for playing games like checkers, but also the *square* stones used as bases of columns.
Liddell-Scott: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper...betic+letter=*p:entry+group=127:entry=pesso/s

Still marginally in-topic, no?


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## Frank06

artion said:


> I resisted to posting this hypothesis of mine earlier - so as to avoid more negative critiques - but if you are interested in the topic you may examine the possibility that italian pezzo and spanish peso are connected with the ancient Gr. πεσσός/πεττός (pessos/pettos), the pieces for playing games like checkers, but also the *square* stones used as bases of columns.
> Liddell-Scott: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper...betic+letter=*p:entry+group=127:entry=pesso/sStill marginally in-topic, no?



It's always a guess what's is meant by the word "connected" in this kind of explanations and it would help us a lot if the nature of the "connection" would be explained in clearer terms: are Spanish 'pesos' and Greek 'pessos' merely cognates which both go back to an earlier form, or is Sp. 'pesos' derived from the Greek word? 
In the first case, the example cannot really be used to demonstrate Greek -tt- > Spanish -s(s)- (or -z- or whatever sibilant).
In both cases, I think we have another problem: 
Peso
"Spanish coin," 1550s, from Sp. peso, lit. "a weight," from L. pensum, properly pp. of pendere "to hang, to cause to hang" (see pendant). Formerly either of silver (peso de plata) or gold (peso de oro).

Otherwise said: it seems that the example of "peso" cannot be used to demonstrate Greek -tt- > Romance/Spanish -s(s)-, since Spanish "peso" is not derived from the Greek word pessos, despite the formal (and hence superficial) similarity. 
I must admit that I didn't look into a possible, erm, connection :-D of whatever sort, between Greek pessos and Latin pendere.

Any which way, let's not forget the reason why we're dealing with this 'peso'/πεσσός/πεττός thing: 


			
				artion said:
			
		

> The Gr. azaria comes from the game tessera (four) or the players of dice "tesserarii".


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## jeffseiver

Hulalessar said:


> I found this explanation here: http://etimologias.dechile.net/?azar
> 
> _*Azar*
> 
> La palabra azar viene del árabe الزهر (az-zahr) que significaba primero "flor" y luego se empleó para la marca que daba la suerte en la taba, que era la rótula de un mamífero mediano, como una oveja o una cabra. En la taba, antecesor del dado cuadrado, se marcaba con una pequeña flor uno de sus lados, que era el que daba la suerte. En el juego que en árabe y otras lenguas de Oriente se llamó نرد (nard), en español tablas reales, en francés tric-trac y en inglés backgammon, el dado se llama زهرة النرد (zahrat an-nard), literalmente "la flor de las tablas reales". El uso de الزهر (az-zahr) con el significado de dado hizo que en castellano se introdujera el arabismo azar con el significado del latín alea._
> 
> For those unfamiliar with Spanish, it says that the primary meaning of_ az-zahr_ is "flower" and that the side of a knucklebone that indicated luck was marked with a flower. (In modern Spanish _azahar _means (orange) blossom.)


I am doing research on the root word Hazard. For the 19th century game of Hazard. I noticed that some posts refer to the word "flower" on the knuckle bones. I also have noticed that the layout for the game of hazard looks like a blooming flower if you are on the dealer side. I was wondering if there might be some connection. Also can anyone reading this post direct me to more detailed reference sources or written papers on the first sources reporting the game?


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## Quiviscumque

The OP wrote:_ the Spanish ''azar'' is first attested in 1283.
_
Well, not really. It is first attested in the _Libro de Aleixandre_, c. 1245. 

From my amateurish point of view, the connection with "flower" is highly speculative. However, the usually finicky Corriente does not hesitate in accepting the derivation _castellano, gallego y portugués _*azar*_ = catalán _*atzar*_ < [árabe] andalusí _azzáhr. I don't know if he has some evidence for this use in Andalusian Arabic, or perhaps he is lowering his guard this once.


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## Quiviscumque

jeffseiver said:


> I am doing research on the root word Hazard. For the 19th century game of Hazard. I noticed that some posts refer to the word "flower" on the knuckle bones. I also have noticed that the layout for the game of hazard looks like a blooming flower if you are on the dealer side. I was wondering if there might be some connection. Also can anyone reading this post direct me to more detailed reference sources or written papers on the first sources reporting the game?



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libro_de_los_juegos :

[fol. 67r] El iuego que llaman azar. 
Otra manera ay de iuego de dados que llaman azar que se iuega en esta guisa. El qui primero ouiere de lançar los dados si lançare .xv. puntos o dizeseys. o dizesiete o dizeocho o las soçobras destas suertes que son seys o cinco o quatro o tres; ganan E qual quiere destas suertes en qual quier manera que uengan segundo los otros iuegos que desuso dixiemos es llamado azar. E si por auentura no lança ninguno destos azares primeramientre & da all otro por suerte una daquellas que son de seys puntos a arriba o de quinze ayuso; en qual quiere manera que pueda uenir. segundo en los otros iuegos dixiemos que uinien. E depues destas lançare alguna de las suertes que aqui dixiemos que son azar; esta suerte sera llamada; reazar & perdera aquel que primero lançare. E otrossi si por auentura no lançare esta suerte que se torna en reazar tomare pora si una de las otras suertes que son de seys puntos a arriba o de quinze ayuso en qual quiere manera que uenga. Conuerna que lançen tantas uegadas fasta que uenga una destas suertes o la suya porque gana. o la dell otro porque pierde. saluo ende si tomare aquella misma suerte que dio all otro; que serie llamada encuentro. Et conuernie que tornassen a alançar como de cabo. E como quier que uiniesse alguna de las suertes que son llamadas azar o reazar & entre tanto que uinie una daquellas que amos auien tomado pora ssi; non ganarie ninguno dellos por ella nin perderie fasta que se partiesse por las suertes; assi como desuso dize.


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## RoobyRoo

Regarding the suggestion about a 13th c. castle "Hasard" (with various spellings) in Palestine that may or may not have given its name to a game of dice:

Curiously, when I put "dice" into Google Translate just now to translate it to Arabic, the translation engine came up with something apparently literally meaning "stone dice", the word for "stone" apparently being "hajar", also spelled/romanized "hijr", with the "j" being soft/voiced like the "Zs" in "Zsa Zsa Gabor", making "hajar/hijr" sound very much like "hazard". I don't know Arabic and this is pure speculation, but I wonder if "stone" could be a reason for the perceived link between a (stone) castle and (stone) dice, and whether it could be, then, that "hazard" comes not from "dice" per se, but from the "stone" attribute, which might not have been recorded in older dictionaries along with the word for dice (which themselves could have been made of a variety of materials).

I have no support for this speculation except for this striking confluence (to my mind) that involves in part a current/modern result from Google Translate (hardly hardcore research), and I place it here for people to do what they like with.


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