Traditionally considered a shortening of jt-šmꜥ(“Upper Egyptian barley”). Allen instead suggests that the word is a nominalized nisba adjective formed from šmꜥ(“thin”) + -(j)(nisba ending), referring to barley with fewer grains than jt-mḥ(“full barley”).
Archaic or greatly restricted in usage by Middle Egyptian. The perfect has mostly taken over the functions of the perfective, and the subjunctive and periphrastic prospective have mostly replaced the prospective.
Declines using third-person suffix pronouns instead of adjectival endings: masculine .f/.fj, feminine .s/.sj, dual .sn/.snj, plural .sn.
James P[eter] Allen (2010) Middle Egyptian: An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs, 2nd edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 253.