E 0148         (TO)  CARD

The verb " to card " is, via Old French, of Latin origin .

H 0772             ה ד ר ק , ד ר ק

Concept of root : thistle, to card

Hebrew word

pronunciation

English meanings

; ד ר ק

ה ד ר ק

qarad;

qarĕdà

to card (wool);

tothistle

Related English words

to card

Comparison between European words and Hebrew

Languages

Words

Pronunciation

English meanings

Similarity in roots

Hebrew

      ד ר ק ;

ה ד ר ק

qarad;

qarĕdà

to card;

thistle

q . r . d

Latin

carrere; carduus

carrĕrĕ;

*cardare;

carduus

to card;

to card;

thistle

c . r ;

c . r d

Italian

cardare;

cardo

cardare;

cardo

to card;

thistle

c . r d

 

 

Proto-Semitic *QARAD --- *CARD-ARE Latin

 

 

In the old times like today, wool had to be carded. People saw the impurities and wanted the wool to be clean. Somebody had the brillant idea to use for this delicate job the upper part of a certain kind of thistles, that combined fine sharpness with delicate flexibility, all so as to clean but not damage the wool. Understandibly this operation came to be called something like "thistling", in Hebrew "qarad" and in Italian "cardare".

 

Note:
  • English "to card" is a loanword from Latin via French.

 

Note:
  • Latin and Italian. Italian "cardo"is the normally used, ablative case of Latin "cardus", the a bit contracted later form of "carduus". But the verb "cardare" is not so easy to explain. Latin had a verb with a double R, "carrere" , but Italian has the original D in "cardare". Probably Latin had suppressed the D in this verb, also spelled "carere". Otherwise one cannot explain the noun "carduus", that to all practical logic should be at the origin of the verb. But how did Italian get around to reintroducing the D ? We do not think that when Italian was born, wool was still being carded with distles.

     

    This means that the verbs "carere" and "carrere" found in written Latin, still had a popular sister "cardere" or intensive "cardare" that was not written in those texts of Latin we dispose of. This is made more probable by the existence of a Vulgar Latin "carditare", obviously an intensive form of "cardo, cardare", with the same meaning of "to card".

 

Note:
  • Hebrew uses also another verb for "to card". That is the verb " ג ר ד , garad ", that we see also in entry E 0391 (Hebrew 0374) with its other meaning of "to scratch" or "to grate " in general.

     

    The word " qaredà" in the above table is modern Hebrew and certainly inspired by the Latin word "carduus " or perhaps Italian " cardo = thistle".

 

Note:
  • Proto-Semitic. The root "Q R D" in the general sense of this entry is used also in Aramaic and Syriac "ק ר ד א, qaredà ", that also stands for "tick" . This has led to the view that the word for "to scrape" would be based on an original meaning of "to clean from ticks". We do not believe this conjecture and would say that our root "Q R D " for "to curry, scrape" has nothing to do with words for "tick". Instead it is related to Hebrew "ג ר ד , garad = to scrape (off)". Proto-Semitic may already have used the root of this entry : "*ק ר ד , Q R D".

 

Note:
  • Indo-European. There is a certain similarity between words like "to card" and "cardare" on one side and verbs for "to scratch" on the other side. Examples are Italian "grattare" and German "kratzen". But if as is generally believed "cardare" comes from "carduus" the thistle originally used for carding, this is a fortuitous similarity.

     

    In our comparison we propose the Latin word , as there is no solid indication of further cognates in other Indo-European groups of languages.

 

 

 

 

 
Created: Tuesday 6 November 2007 at 22.30.54 Updated: 22/11/2012 at 18.03.20