فلاح

Arabic

فَلَّاح

Etymology

From the root ف ل ح (f-l-ḥ). The sense of "farmer" is assumed to be borrowed from Aramaic פלחא / ܦܠܚܐ (pallāḥā, worker; peasant), owing to the dominant economy of Arabic speakers being nomadic when in contrast Aramaic speakers practised agriculture. This assumed, فَلَحَ (falaḥa, to furrow, to plow; to slit, to cleave) would be denominal.

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /fal.laːħ/

Noun

فَلَّاح • (fallāḥ) m (plural فَلَّاحُون (fallāḥūn), feminine فَلَّاحَة (fallāḥa))

  1. (countable) a farmer, a peasant
    Synonyms: مُزَارِع (muzāriʕ, a farmer), زَرَّاع (zarrāʕ, planter, sower), حَرَّاث (ḥarrāṯ, tiller, plower, cultivator), (archaic) أَكَّار (ʔakkār, furrower), (obsolete) كَافِر (kāfir, a husbandman, a farmer, a peasant)
    هٰؤُلَاءِ الْفَلَّاحُونَ مِنْ تِلْكَ الْقَرْيَةِ الْمِصْرِيَّةِ الْكَبِيرَةِ.
    hāʔulāʔi al-fallāḥūna min tilka l-qaryati l-miṣriyyati l-kabīrati.
    These farmers are from that big Egyptian village.

Declension

Descendants

  • English: fellah
  • French: fellah
  • German: Fellache
  • Kurdish
    Northern Kurdish: file, fele, fileh, fillah, fille
    Central Kurdish: فەلە (fele)
  • Russian: фелла́х (felláx)
  • Swahili: falahi
  • Ottoman Turkish: فلاح

Noun

فَلَاح • (falāḥ) m

  1. (uncountable) success
    Antonym: خَيْبَة (ḵayba)

Declension

References

  • Fraenkel, Siegmund (1886) Die aramäischen Fremdwörter im Arabischen (in German), Leiden: E. J. Brill, page 126
  • Lane, Edward William (1863) “فلاح”, in Arabic-English Lexicon, London: Williams & Norgate, page 2439
  • Wehr, Hans (1979) “فلح”, in J. Milton Cowan, editor, A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, 4th edition, Ithaca, NY: Spoken Language Services, →ISBN, page 850
  • Поленаковиќ, Харалампие (2007) “663. FILEAH”, in Зузана Тополињска, Петар Атанасов, editors, Турските елементи во ароманскиот [Turskite elementi vo aromanskiot], put into Macedonian from the author’s Serbo-Croatian Turski elementi u aromunskom dijalektu (1939, unpublished) by Веселинка Лаброска, Скопје: Македонска академија на науките и уметностите [Makedonska akademija na naukite i umetnostite], →ISBN, page 122

Egyptian Arabic

Root
ف ل ح
1 term

Noun

فلاح • (fallāḥ) m (plural فلّاحين, feminine فلّاحة)

  1. (countable) a farmer
    1. (countable, Cairene, derogatory, offensive, slang) a rustic, a peasant, a provincial
    2. (countable, Cairene, derogatory or humorous, slang) an ignorant, a peasant

Usage notes

The word is typically used by Egyptian urbanites to refer to migrants who have come from the countryside to the cities (such as Cairo and Alexandria), particularly those who are seen as exhibiting or normalizing socially disapproved-of behavior. However, it has also come to be used jocularly to signify "ignorance" in general, especially that which is envisioned as stereotypically rustic.

This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.