בָּבֶלBabel
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Root
bhabharika
to swing wide open, to flap open, as a door or shutter flung wide
Babel descends from Shona bhabharika, to swing wide open, the gate
- Confidence
- 58/100
- Root language
- Shona
- Descent begins
- בָּבֶל (Bāḇel)Hebrew
The consensus position
Mainstream comparative Semitics takes בָּבֶל as a Hebrew borrowing of Akkadian Bābili(m), the name of the city on the Euphrates, which Akkadian speakers themselves reanalysed as bāb-ilim "gate of the god" and which most likely rests on an older non-Semitic, possibly Sumerian, place name of unrecoverable meaning. The Genesis 11:9 link to בלל "to confuse" is universally treated as a literary pun, not an etymology, and no relation to any Bantu language is recognised.
The working behind this.
The full descent — 9 links from the attested form down to the root — the segment-by-segment correspondences, the phonological breakdown and the case for the derivation are behind an account.
An account opens 10 entries in full, free.
Elsewhere in the corpus
- בראbara (kubara)to beget, to bring forth, to give birth; in Karanga and Ndau craft use also to pare or hollow out
- Edenhudendeabundance, plenty, superfluity; from -dende, gourd or large calabash
- Nekevahnengovenotch, grooved cut; one bearing a notched or bored thing (variant nhengove)
- ZakhárZikirato know thoroughly, to recognise, to be acquainted with, to hold in mind (applicative of -zika / -ziva, to know)
- Pesachpesato pass, to pass by, to go past, to swerve aside; kupesana, to pass one another without meeting
- Megiddogudurato knock off, to break off, to dislodge a piece