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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Spanish halagar, Old Spanish falagar 'to wheedle,' along with Catalan afalagar, Portuguese afagar, having the same meaning, is referred by Meyer-Lübke to Arabic halaka, defined as 'glatt machen'; but since this Arabic word, spelled with hha (h), not cha (h), means 'to shave (the head, etc.),' the etymology stated by Meyer-Lübke is evidently erroneous. Lokotsch derives the Romance group from the intensive form of kalaka 'to create'; that is, ⨿laka, defined as meaning ‘schön formen, glatt machen, Lügen erfinden’; but if the etymon contained a double l, it would have remained as ll in Spanish, as Baist long ago pointed out. Baist himself met this difficulty by assuming that the first stem of ⨿aka, meaning normally 'to create,' must also have had the sense of the intensive stem, which, he says, was used in Spain meaning 'to beguile.' A more satisfactory starting-point, avoiding both phonetic difficulty and problematic definition, is the third stem of halaka 'to create'; that is, hālaka, ‘to treat (a person) kindly.‘ The slight semantic shift envolved obviously presents no difficulty.
1 Rom. et. Wb., 3rd ed.
2 Et. Wb. der europ. Wörter orientalischen Ursprungs.
3 Rom. Forschungen, iv, 357.
4 Baist quotes Pedro de Alcalá as saying that kallaka means sossacar.
5 Z. R. Ph., xliii, 131.
6 Rom. et. Wb., 3rd ed.
7 Rew, 3rd ed., s.v. *rosicare.
8 Et. Wb. d. [see note 3].
9 Diez gives the form sollamar, which I cannot verify.
10 Rew, 3rd ed.
11 Rieb, 6.8
12 Voc. medieval castellano.