The Etymology of Meschino and Its Cognates

Abstract

It is generally recognized that Italian meschino and French mesquin go back to Arab. miskin 'poor, humble, submissive'. To Semitists it is obvious, moreover, that the latter form cannot be a direct, inner-Arabic development from one of the roots which appear as skn. The adjective is found also in Ethiopic and Aramaic (meskin), and in Hebrew (miskn' now if the Arab. form had been derived from skn 'dwell, rest', the Heb. and Aram. cognates would have displayed S (from 9kn), in accordance with the normal laws of correspondence between the NorthwestSem. and Arab. sibilants. Since, however, the Heb. and Aram. forms of the adjective in question are written with the samek-sign (s, which remains unchanged in the Sem. languages), the word cannot be related to s/gkn 'dwell, etc.'; Arab. sakuna 'to be poor' is thus clearly a separate root, in all probability a denominative. Cuneiform sources throw further light on the subject. Akkadian mugkenu occurs frequently in the sense of 'humble, poor, wretched'. In the Code of Hammurabi the word denotes the middle one of the three classes of population, hence the 'plebeian' as opposed to the amelu 'patrician', and the wardu 'slave'. From that time (beginning of the second millennium) onwards the word spreads rapidly, gaining constantly in usage and application; in the Amarna Letters it has the meaning 'pauper',2 and with the abstract ending -itu we find it in the Akk. versions of the Hittite treaties in the sense of 'wretchedness'.$ This wide currency of the Akk. term and its indisputable priority point to Mesopotamia as the ultimate source of Arab. miskin and its Sem. and European counterparts and derivatives, as was recognized long ago by Jensen.4 Just one qualification must be added here: since all the loanwords contain the plain sibilant s, as against the Akk. ', the word must have been launched on its remarkable international career through