Etymology

qobar

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Today it means: A dry fog or dry haze, chiefly of the upper Nile but rarely also elsewhere, which has a brownish-yellow color when slight (sometimes only perceptible from a distance) and darker yellow-grey color when thicker (sometimes obscuring the landscape and blotting out the stars). Full definition →

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The story

From Ge'ez ቆባረ (ḳobarä, “darkness, blackness; fog, mist, dust”), from ቆበረ (ḳobärä, “become black, dark, or foggy”), which Antoine d'Abbadie said derives from the root ق ب ر (q b r, “bury”, root), because it "buries" the landscape and obscures the stars. Wolf Leslau alternatively speculated that it is "perhaps related" to Arabic كفر (kifr, “darkness of the night”) from the root ك ف ر (k f r, “conceal”, root).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.