Edward William Lane, An Arabic-English Lexicon, ض

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مِضْمَارٌ ذ A training-place in which horses are prepared for racing [or for military service] by being fed with food barely sufficient to sustain them, after they have become fat: (S, * Msb, K: *) [a hippodrome; a place where horses are exercised:] pl. مَضَامِيرُ. (A.) You say, جَرَى فِى المِضْمَارِ [He ran in the hippodrome, or place of exercise]. (A.) And الغِنَآءُ مِضْمَارُ الشِّعْرِ (tropical:) [app. meaning Singing is that in which the excellences of poetry are displayed, like as the excellences of a horse are displayed in the hippodrome]. (A.) ― -b2- Also The time, of forty days, during which a horse is reduced to food barely sufficient to sustain him, after his having been fed with fodder so that he has become fat; (S, TA;) the time during which a horse is thus prepared for racing or for an expedition against the enemy: pl. as above. (TA.) It is said in a trad., اَلْيَوْمَ مِضْمَارٌ وَغَدًا ا@لْسِّبَاقُ وَالسَّابِقُ مَنْ سَبَقَ ا@لْجَنَّةَ [To-day is a time for training, and to-morrow is the race, and the winner is he who wins Paradise:] i. e., to-day one is to work, in the present world, for the desire of Paradise; like as a horse is trained for racing. (Sh.) [One of the explanations of المضمار in the K is غَايَةُ الفَرَسِ فِى السِّبَاقِ, or, as in the TA, لِلسِّبَاقِ; app. meaning The goal, or limit, of the horse in racing: but in the TA, these words are made to form part of an explanation which I have given before, i. e., the time during which a horse is prepared for racing, &c.] -A2- See also 2.