Den Beste wants to know how to say "unmitigated gall" in Arabic. Well we at the TurkeyBlog aim to please.

The Turkey Blog doesn't really know Arabic, just as he doesn't really know any languages well beyond French and English. But he dabbles in languages, and so had a book or two laying around from a time when he thought it would be neat to know what those strange characters said (I can also draw a couple dozen Chinese characters; a little knowledge and all that).

Anyway, I pulled out a truly crappy English-Arabic dictionary (Al-Mawrid), then cross-checked against Wehr's Arabic-English (the cheap Arabic-English dictionary to have) and found that the roots relating to gall reveal some fascinating things. So here's the entry for "marra" (I didn't include the Arabic script for obvious reasons):

marra. (marara) to be or become bitter II. to make bitter, embitter IV. to be or become bitter; to make bitter VI. to fight, contend, dispute X. to think bitter, find bitter [the Roman numerals refer to conjugation tables, not definitions]

[and now, the variants; remember, in Arabic vowels go all over the place and words are related if they have the same consonants]

murr. bitter; severe; sharp; painful; bitterness; myrrh...

mirra. gall, bile; (pl. form amrar) strength, power

marara. bitterness; gall, gall bladder; innermost; heart; (inshaqqat marara gaizan) he burst with anger

marir. strong, firm, stubborn, tenacious, dogged, persistent, deep-seated, deep, profound (esp. of feelings)

marira. firmness; determination, resoluteness; vigor, energy, tenacity, doggedness; steadiness, constancy

amarr. firmer, stronger; bitterer...

mamrur. bilious; foolish, crazy; fool

So there you have it, sports fans. An Arabic verb meaning "to make bitter" gives rise to expressions for everything from bitterness, to tenaciousness, to anger, to profundity, to strength, to vigor, to foolishness to - this is for Den Beste - gall.

I'll leave it to others to ponder what it means that all these ideas can be derived from one root word, though the linking of bitterness, strength and depth of emotion may give us some idea of the linguistic mindset we're facing here.

People who actually know Arabic, please spare your lectures. I know this is a bit amateurish. If you've got a better post, I'll be glad to link it. Otherwise, take this for what it is, an amateur linguist's crude investigation of a subject on which he really should know better than to speak.