Etymology

sawm

S1A1W4M3

Today it means: Fasting, abstention, abstinence; the third of the five pillars of Islam. Full definition →

Arabic صَوْم ← Classical Syriac ܨܘܡܐ
Ask AI about its historyChatGPTClaudePerplexityGoogle AIGrok

The story

  1. Classical Syriac · derived fromܨܘܡܐ
  2. Arabic · derived fromصَوْم“fasting; abstaining from food, drink, and sex”
  3. English todaysawm

From Arabic صَوْم (ṣawm, “fasting; abstaining from food, drink, and sex”), probably borrowed from Classical Syriac ܨܘܡܐ (ṣawmāʾ).

Words from the same roots

Arabicصَوْم all →

saum

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.