This text is part of:
Table of Contents:
بَنَانٌ بنان The fingers; syn. أَصَابِعُ: (M, Msb, K:) but whether it means peculiarly the اصابع of the hand, or those of the foot also, [i. e. the toes,] is disputed: (TA:) or the ends, or extremities, thereof: (S, M, Msb, K:) said to be so called because by their means are ordered those circumstances whereby man continues in existence; from أَبَنَّ بِالْمَكَانِ: (Msb:) mentioned in the Kur viii. 12 because therewith one fights, and defends himself: (Er-Rághib, TA:) or it there signifies all the limbs, or members, of the body: (Aboo-Is-hák, M:) or the fingers, or toes, and any other parts of all the limbs, or members: (Zj, TA:) or it means in the Kur the شَوَى; (Lth, T, TA;) so in lxxv. 4; (M;) i. e. the arms or hands and the legs or feet: (Lth, T, TA:) accord. to El-Fárisee the meaning of the words in the Kur lxxv. 4 is, we are able to make their extremities like those of the camel, so that they should not profit by them in handicraft: (M, TA:) the n. un. is with ة; (Lth, T, S, M, K;) meaning, accord. to Lth, a single إِِصْبَع [i. e. finger, or toe]; or, accord. to AHeyth, the whole اصبع; or, as some say, the highest عُقْدَة [or joint] of the اصبع: (T:) the pl. of pauc. is بَنَانَاتٌ; but a pl. of mult. is sometimes used as one of pauc.; and hence the saying of the rájiz, “ خَمْسَ بَنَانٍ قَانِئِ الأَظْفَارِ
” [Five fingers, or ends of fingers, intensely red from the dye of hinnà in the nails], meaning خَمْسًا مِنَ البَنَانِ: and one says, بَنَانٌ مُخَضَّبٌ [Fingers, or ends of fingers, dyed, or much dyed, with hinnà]; for every pl. [or rather coll. gen. n.] between which and its sing., or n. un., there is no difference but ة [added in the latter] may be treated as sing. and masc. (S.) Lth cites as an ex. of the n. un., “ لَيْسَ لِحَىٍّ فَوْقَهُمْ بَنَانَهْ
لَاهُمَّ أَكْرَمْتَ بَنِى كِنَانَه
” meaning [O God, Thou hast honoured the sons of Kináneh: there belongs not to any tribe] excel-lence of the measure of a finger above them. (T, TA.)
An Arabic-English Lexicon. London. Williams and Norgate. 1863.
The U.S. Department of Education, The Max Planck Society provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.
hide
Dictionary Entry Lookup
Use this tool to search for dictionary entries in all lexica.
