ܓܰܘܫܳܩܳܐ gwšqʾ gawšāqā pinnacle, merlon; pavilion, palace
MP kōšk [kwšk'] pavilion, palace, kiosk (CPD 51; Nyberg 119); NP kūšk a palace, villa, a castle, citadel (Steingass 1062), kušk an upper chamber, gallery or balcon on the top of a house (ibid. 1033). — Talm. Aram. qwšqʾ tower, palace; Arab. ǧawsaq palace.
The meaning of the Syr. word is problematic: Horn (211) gives "Kiosk" as the meaning of the Syr. form, but LS (and Telegdi) records only the meaning "pinna", namely "pinnacle, merlon"; PS 693 vocalizes the word as gušqā and translates "palace". Nyberg (119) and Telegdi (254, 122) suggest that both Syr. gwšqʾ and Talm. Aram. qwšqʾ come from MP kōšk palace, castle. This etymon implies that the initial voiced plosive in Syr. is to be considered a secondary phenomenon, maybe the result of a dissimilation: some cases of allotropy between voiced and voiceless initial plosives are in fact attested in Syriac loanwords from Iranian, see for example gwšpʾ/kwšpʾ (see s.v. and § 11.3.1). Arab. ǧawsaq would be borrowed from Syr. by reason of the initial voiced phoneme, which is unattested in Iranian. On the contrary, Lagarde (GA 25, 58), followed by Horn (211, s.v. gōše "Winkel, Ecke"), claims that Syr. gwšqʾ was borrowed from an Iranian form with initial g-: he refers to NP gōša an angle, corner, nook, closet (Steingass 1104; Horn 211), but the model of the Syr. loanword must be Early MP gōšak, later MP gōšag [gwšk'] corner (CPD 37); ManMP gwšg /gōšag/ corner (Durkin-Meisterernst 2004, 168). Furthermore, Lagarde believes that NP kūšk "a palace, villa" is a loanword from Turk. kiöšk, in its turn borrowed from Pers. gōša. Note, however, that the form with the devoiced initial plosive meaning "kiosk"—which, according to Lagarde, depends on Turkish—is already attested in MP kōšk: this circumstance makes it rather difficult to accept that the form was borrowed back from Turkish. However, Lagarde's hypothesis is accepted by Horn, who gets rid of the MP form, claiming that it is a late one. But MP kōšk is attested in ahrestānihā ī Ērān, which does not seem particularly late: Markwart assumed that it was composed in the eighth century AD, Boyce proposes the ninth century (cf. Cereti 2001, 202 f.) ● Joh Eph 79u (s.l.?); BB 477, 22 ◆ LS 110b; PS 693; Lagarde GA 25, 58; Duval index pers. 217