This article is a presentation of the EtymArab© project, a start-up (“zero”) version of an etymological dictionary of Modern Standard Arabic. Taking the etymology of some generosity-related lexical items as examples, the study introduces the reader to the guiding ideas behind the project and the online dictionary’s basic features.

This article is a presentation of the EtymArab© project, a start-up (“zero”) version of an etymological dictionary of Modern Standard Arabic. Taking the etymology of some generosity-related lexical items as examples, the study introduces the reader to the guiding ideas behind the project and the online dictionary’s basic features.

This article is a presentation of the EtymArab© project, a start-up (“zero”) version of an etymological dictionary of Modern Standard Arabic. Taking the etymology of some generosity-related lexical items as examples, the study introduces the reader to the guiding ideas behind the project and the online dictionary’s basic features.

The following article can serve as yet another report from the workshop of an Etymological Dictionary of Arabic ( EtymArab).1 Work on a ‘zero version’ of such a dictionary has seen (slow but) steady progress since several years now. Taking the root √SLQ as an example, this contribution gives an idea about the high potential of such a project, but also shows its clear actual limits. The enormous spectrum of semantic values covered by √SLQ—one may distinguish more than thirty meanings that, at first sight, do not seem related to each other—provides a fine illustration of the complex composition of the modern as well as the classical lexicon. The current state of affairs in Arabic etymology allows us, to a certain degree, to ‘sort out things’ and bring some order into this confusing complexity. In many cases, however, research also remains ‘hanging in the air’.