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into European languages through the Span. azarcon, a word of which there is a curious history in Dozy and Engelmann. Two Spanish words and their distinct Arabic originals have been confounded in the Span. Dict. of Cobarruvias (1611) and others following him. Sp. zarca is a woman with blue eyes, and this comes from Ar. zarka, fem. of azrak, blue. This has led the lexicographers above referred to astray, and azarcon has been by them defined as a blue earth, made of burnt lead. But azarcon really applies to red-lead, or vermilion, as does the Port. zarcão, azarcão, and its proper sense is as the Dict. of the Sp. Academy says (after repeating the inconsistent explanation and etymology of Cobarruvias), an intense orange-colour, Lat. color aureus. This is from the Ar. zarkun, which in Ibn Baithar is explained as synonymous with salikun, and asranj, which the Greeks call sandix, i.e. cinnabar or vermilion (see Sontheimers Ebn Beithar, i. 44, 530). And the word, as Dozy shows, occurs in Pliny under the form syricum (see quotations below). The eventual etymology is almost certainly Persian, either zargun, gold colour, as Marcel Devic suggests, or azargun (perhaps more properly azargun, from azar, fire), flame-colour, as Dozy thinks. A.D. c. 70.Hoc ergo adulteratur minium in officinis sociorum, et ubivis Syrico. Quonam modo Syricum fiat suo loco docebimus, sublini autem Syrico minium conpendi ratio demonstrat.Plin. N. H. XXXIII. vii. |
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