شبر

A trade term presumably acquired by Arabic when it was employed for transactions to the north of the Peninsula in farther antiquity, from Hebrew שֶׁבֶר (šeḇer) in a vocalization more conservative than the Tiberian one, or from Ammonite or Old Aramaic, or even directly Akkadian 𒆬𒉻𒁺 (KU₃.PAD.DU /⁠šibirtu, šabartu, šebirtu, šipirtu⁠/, “break, fragment, lump of a stone or ore etc.”), derivations of Proto-Semitic *ṯabar- (“to break in twain”), the later Aramaic parallel to which also was borrowed by Arabic as تِبْر (tibr, “pure ore of gold or silver”).

شِبْر • (šibr) m (plural أَشْبَار (ʔašbār))

1. span (the measure of the hand)

• شَبَرَ (šabara, “to mete with the span”)
• شَبَّرَ (šabbara, “to magnify; to gesture”)
• أَشْبَرَ (ʔašbara, “to beget children tall in the statures; to donate”)
• تَشَبَّرَ (tašabbara, “to be of a large stature”)
• تَشَابَرَ (tašābara, “to approach each other in battle closely”)
• أَشْبَر (ʔašbar, “wider in the span”)

شَبَرَ • (šabara) I (non-past يَشْبُرُ (yašburu) or يَشْبِرُ (yašbiru), verbal noun شَبْر (šabr))

1. to mete with the span, to apportion by the شِبْر (šibr)

شَبْر • (šabr) m

1. verbal noun of شَبَرَ (šabara) (form I)
2. dation, gift

شَبَّرَ • (šabbara) II (non-past يُشَبِّرُ (yušabbiru), verbal noun تَشْبِير (tašbīr))

1. to magnify, to extol
2. to gesture, to sign with the hand

Borrowed from Latin sūber.

شُبِر or شُبَر • (šubir or šubar) m

1. cork oak (Quercus suber)
   • c. 1200, يحيى بن محمد بن أحمد بن العوام [yaḥyā ibn muḥammad ibn ʔaḥmad ibn al-ʕawwām], edited by José Antonio Banqueri, كتاب الفلاحة [Book on Agriculture], volume 2, Madrid: Imprenta Real, published 1802^IA, Cap. 34, Art. 6, pages 721–722:

     وقال غيره يتخذ لها الخلايا من خشب الأرز ومن طين طيب الريح وتطين الخلايا من خارجها برماد وأخثاء البقر مدقوق معجون بالماء ويتخذ لها بعض الناس الخلايا من قشور الشبر وتسميه العامة «جناحا»

     And another author said that for beehives cedar wood and clay of good smell is taken and the beehives are daubed from the outside with ash and cow dung powdered and kneaded with water, and some people take for beehives the barks of the cork oak, generally called “wings”.

• Corriente, Federico, Pereira, Christophe, Vicente, Angeles, editors (2017), Dictionnaire du faisceau dialectal arabe andalou. Perspectives phraséologiques et étymologiques (in French), Berlin: De Gruyter, →ISBN, page 682
• Dozy, Reinhart Pieter Anne (1881) “شبر”, in Supplément aux dictionnaires arabes‎ (in French), volume 1, Leiden: E. J. Brill, page 719
• Freytag, Georg (1833) “شبر”, 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 388
• Kazimirski, Albin de Biberstein (1860) “شبر”, 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, page 1183
• Lane, Edward William (1863) “شبر”, in Arabic-English Lexicon‎, London: Williams & Norgate, pages 1495–1496
• Wehr, Hans with Kropfitsch, Lorenz (1985) “شبر”, in Arabisches Wörterbuch für die Schriftsprache der Gegenwart‎ (in German), 5th edition, Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, published 2011, →ISBN, page 628