Shared words diverged in meaning because Arabs were pastoralists and Hebrews farmers
Evidence
In Hebrew lehfiem means bread, whereas the Arabic lahfim means meat. Both obviously derive from the same word, and designate a major foodstuff. Similarly, samn in Arabic means clarified butter; the cognate Hebrew word shemen means oil. A moment’s thought is enough to explain the difference. For the pastoral Arabs, these basic words designated meat and butter; for the agricultural He brews, bread and oil. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 222
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- DEFINE: A compact example of how ecological lifestyle shapes the semantic drift of cognate words.