A Semantic and Philological Study about the word “Wid” in an Attributed Poem to Rudaki

Document Type : Research

Author

PhD student in Ancient Iranian Culture and Languages, University of Tehran

Abstract

In this paper, we study the semantic and derivative meaning of the term “Wid”, which is used in an attributed poem to Rudaki. In ancient Persian dictionaries there are two meanings of "lost" and "little" for this word, and it is not clear what the original meaning of the word is. We try to find out the correct meaning of the word by studying the manuscripts of the various Persian dictionaries and the poetic evidence in which this word is used. In this way, we reconstruct and identify the old and middle Iranian forms of the word, and show other possible forms of the word in Persian Dari and Tabari Zaidi languages. According to the evidence it is probably the correct meaning of the word is "lost" and the meaning "little" was formed by the writing character of the letter "k" for "g" in the early Persian texts. 

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