ܒܰܛܳܐ [†] bṭʾ baṭā duck
According to Lagarde and LS this is an Iranian loanword, cf. NP bat a duck (Steingass 154; Horn 51), Arm. LW bad, bat id. (Hübschmann AG 114, no. 86); however, it is very doubtful that Syriac borrowed this term from an Iranian language: in fact, Leonid Kogan has drawn to my attention (personal communication) that the word is a typical Kulturwort, and belongs to a large group of related forms, from Span. pato (cf. Corominas, s.v.) to Arab. baṭṭ-, some of which are also attested in the Caucasian languages (cf. Nikolayev – Starostin 1994, 301); furthermore, the term appears early in the Semitic languages: cf. Aram. bṭ in a Demotic papyrus (R. Steiner in Hoftijzer – Jongeling 1995, 1254); Schapka (1972, pp. 21 and 24, no. 64 and 76) refers to Doerfer 1963/1, 91, which underlines the presence of phonologically similar names for the duck in many unrelated languages ● Kays 254, 6 ◆ LS 66a; Lagarde 21, 47