خي
Appearance
North Levantine Arabic
[edit]Pronunciation
[edit]Etymology 1
[edit]From a diminutive of Arabic أَخ (ʔaḵ). Compare also بي (bayy, “father”) vis-à-vis Arabic أَب (ʔab).
Noun
[edit]خي • (ḵayy) m (plural إخوة (ʔiḵwe) or إخوات (ʔiḵwāt), feminine إخت (ʔiḵt))
Usage notes
[edit]- Curiously, خيات (ḵayyāt) is only a valid plural of إخت (ʔiḵt, “sister”), even though the rhyming word بي (bayy, “father”) takes the plural بيات (bayyāt).
Etymology 2
[edit]Possibly from Arabic خَيْر (ḵayr, “good, goodness”, noun), making it a doublet of North Levantine Arabic خير (ḵayr /ḵayr, ḵēr/). The ر (r) would have been sporadically deleted before monophthongization became widespread.
Comparable South Levantine Arabic خوي (ḵoy, same meaning) is harder to explain in this manner, but if not a sporadic vowel shift from خَيي (ḵayy) it could be a reduction of a diminutive *خويّ (ḵwayy). This would in turn be either derived directly from خَيّ (ḵayy) or descended from *خوير (ḵwayr), itself a diminutive of خير (ḵayr).
Interjection
[edit]خي • (ḵayy)
- relief! (expressing pleasure with a sudden absence of stress or noise)
- 2005, Stavro Jabra, التمثيل الناقص [The missing representative][1], Lebanon, archived from the original on 2019-11-11:
- خَيّْ... خلصنا من أَول جنرال...
- ḵayy... ḵluṣna min ʾawwal jinirāl...
- Thank goodness... we've gotten rid of the first general...
Categories:
- North Levantine Arabic terms inherited from Arabic
- North Levantine Arabic terms derived from Arabic
- North Levantine Arabic lemmas
- North Levantine Arabic nouns
- North Levantine Arabic masculine nouns
- Lebanese North Levantine Arabic
- North Levantine Arabic terms with unknown etymologies
- North Levantine Arabic doublets
- North Levantine Arabic interjections
- North Levantine Arabic terms with quotations
- apc:Family