La chasse aux papillons: Butterflies, Oaks, Spinning Tops, Braggarts, and Devils between Indo-European and Semitic

Abstract

The Modern Hebrew word for ‘butterfly,’ parpar, was coined by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda and is commonly believed to derive from a playful adaptation of the Italian farfalla combined with the Hebrew root pirpɛr. A comparative analysis of the mainly Levantine and Arabian Semitic lexicons suggests that the root p.r.p.r entered Hebrew through Aramaic. Aramaic also appears to underlie the Arabic developments of p.r.p.r, notably frequent in Levantine and Christian va-rieties. Aramaic may have introduced p.r.p.r into Semitic from Indo-European, where the root *pr- yields a wide semantic network including ‘beat,’ ‘split,’ ‘axe,’ and its reduplicated form produces lexemes for ‘butterfly’ and ‘oak.’ While p.r.p.r enters Semitic as a reduplicated root of Indo-European origin, triconsonantal expansions from biconsonantal *pr- likely developed within Semitic, possibly also influenced by Indo-European roots and flexed forms. Ben-Ye-huda’s parpar thus seems to draw more from Hebrew literary tradition and his familiarity with Slavic vocabulary than from any direct Italian model. Contemporary developments of p.r.p.r in Arabic and Modern Hebrew are reported. Finally, I address semantic extensions of p.r.p.r in Arabic (instability in relationships, boasting, noise-making, and nonsensical speech), which may be connected to Provençal fanfa, French fanfare, Italian farfallone, farfallino, fanfarra, fanfarone, farfugliare, vanvera, and furfante.