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64“and the vagina again in another exotic spelling” (al-qaḥfalīz): as alkhafashanfal, see preceding note.

65“instruments of erection” (adawāt al-naṣb): adawāt is a grammatical term (literally, “instruments”) applied to particles (prepositions, adverbs, conjunctions, and interjections) that govern other words; adawāt al-naṣb (e.g., an, lan, idhan, kay) require that words they govern end in a naṣb; however, naṣb, in its non-grammatical sense, means “lifting up, erecting,” and the author puns on this.

66“the thrower, the catapult,” etc.: many of the items in this and the next list appear to be epithets.

67khabanfatha: defined simply as “a name for the anus” (Qāmūs).

68“the fontanel” (al-rammāʿah): so called “because of its elasticity” (Jamāl al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Mukarram al-Ifrīqī Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān al-ʿArab, http://www.baheth.info/).

69“the dry and sweaty smelling” (al-ṣumārā): cf. al-ṣamīr “the man whose flesh is dry on his bones and who gives off a smell of sweat” (Qāmūs).

70“the draining vent” (al-ʿazlā or al-ʿazlāʾ): literally, the mouth at the bottom of a waterskin used to drain off the last remains of the water.

71“the black one” (al-saḥmāʾ): in the text this is followed by al-funquṣah, for which no meaning has been found.

72“the bunghole and the butthole” (al-burʿuth wa-l-buʿthuṭ): two further words meaning “anus,” with no further senses and with no other members to their respective roots.

73adawāt al-jazm: particles (see n. 65) that govern words ending with a closed syllable (jazm), e.g., negational lā, lam; in its non-grammatical sense, jazm means “cutting off or amputation,” whence the expression in the Qāmūs, jazama bi-salḤihi “he voided part of his excrement, part thereof remaining” or simply “he cast forth his excrement” (Lane, Lexicon).

74“another word for the penis”: al-suḥādil defined simply as dhakar (“penis”).

75“the strong, crafty wolf” (al-ḍabīz): such is its definition in the dictionaries, with no indication that it may be used figuratively.

76“the thimble” (al-qusṭubīnah): this and the next item refer presumably to the glans penis.

77“the prick” (al-qahbalīs): a word not found in the dictionaries, though the related qahbalis occurs, defined in the Qāmūs as zubb (“penis,” a vulgarism).

78the qaṣṭabīr: an orphan word, the only one in its root and cited in only one dictionary (Qāmūs), where it is defined simply as “penis” (dhakar).

79“the tassels” (al-jazājiz): assuming that their use in the sense of “penises” derives from the underlying meaning of “tassels of colored wools with which the [women’s] camel-litter is decorated” (Lisān); singular jizjizah.

80adawāt al-jarr: particles that govern words ending in i, i.e., prepositions that govern the genitive case; in its non-grammatical sense, jarr means “drawing toward, attracting,” prepositions being so called because the governed word is “attracted to,” or governed by, them.

81“to shtup” (ʿazaṭa): described in the Lisān as “seemingly a metathesis of” (kaʾannu maqlūbun min) ṭaʿaza (the next to preceding item in this list).

82“another word of similar form but dubious status” (ʿazlaba): the author of the Lisān writes, “I cannot confirm it” (lā aḥuqquhu).

83“to bridge” (qanṭara): assuming the use of this denominal verb in the phrase qanṭara l-jāriyah (“he had intercourse with the slave girl”) derives, perhaps via a visual image, from the base sense of the noun qanṭarah (“bridge”).

84“to fuck hard” (qasbara): assuming the verb derives from the nouns qisbār or qusburī meaning “a hard penis.”

85“to fill her up” (qamṭara): cf. (Lisān) “to fill a water skin” and “to tie off a water skin with its thong.”

86“to kick her” (laṭaza): if we assume that this sense derives from that of “to kick (its calf), of a she-camel.”

87“and a variant of the same” (lamadha): the latter is a dialectal form of the preceding, i.e., lamaja (Lisān).

88i.e., beginning with the first letter of the Arabic alphabet and ending with the last.

89Meaning here the Arabs of the Arabian Peninsula in the days before, during, and shortly after the appearance of Islam, that is, the speakers of the pure Arabic language before its corruption by contact with other peoples and its decadence as the result of the passage of time.

90The Qāmūs equates the two words at the point in its entry from which the author takes this definition; elsewhere, however, he defines khajawjāh as “a wind that blows constantly,” thus supporting the author’s argument.

91“his ‘ocean’” (qāmūsuhu): see Glossary.

92“the zaqqūm tree”: a tree that grows in Hell and whose fruit are exceedingly bitter (Q Wāqiʿah 56:52).

93“she is to be excused because she was unaware that I, in fact, was only feigning sleep”: the argument seems to be circular, i.e., she is to be excused for not visiting him while asleep because, in fact, he was not asleep.

94“paronomasia”: (tajnīs (or jinās), literally “making similar”): perhaps the most used rhetorical figure, it consists of deploying in proximity two words that are identical, or almost so, in the ductus but differ in vowelling and diacritics (e.g., “handsome” and “coarse” or “his deeds” and “his money”)

95i.e., Buṭrus Yūsuf Ḥawwā, to whom the book is dedicated.

96Saʿd al-Dīn Masʿūd ibn ʿUmar al-Taftazānī (d. between 791/1389 and 797/1395) was the author of commentaries (Al-Muṭawwal, Al-Mukhtaṣar) on al-Khaṭīb al-Qazwīnī’s Talkhīṣ al-miftāḥ (The Summary of the Key) that were accepted for centuries as “the primary authoritative texts for the advanced study of rhetoric” (Meisami and Starkey, Encyclopedia, 2:751).

97Abū Yaʿqūb Yūsuf ibn Abī Bakr al-Sakkākī (d. 626/1229) is best known for his Miftāḥ al-ʿulūm (The Key to the Sciences). His definitions and formulations “became standard in the science of Arab rhetoric” (Meisami and Starkey, Encyclopedia, 2:679).

98Abū l-Qāsim al-Ḥasan ibn Bishr al-Āmidī (d. 370/980), whose Al-Muwāzanah bayna Abī Tammām wa-l-Buḥturī, which compares the poetry of Abū Tammām and al-Buḥturī, is “one of the most important monuments of Arabic literary criticism” (Meisami and Starkey, Encyclopedia, 1:85).