نسء

Core meaning

To defer, to set outside the count; in another use with no established link, the staff (مِنسَأَة).

Uses

1. ٱلنَّسِىٓءُ → "the postponement" : the time left outside the count of the twelve months, whose status is decided every year.

   • «إِنَّمَا ٱلنَّسِىٓءُ زِيَادَةٌۭ فِى ٱلْكُفْرِ» — "The postponement is only an increase in disowning" (9:37)

2. مِنسَأَتَهُۥ → "his staff" : Sulayman's staff, eaten away by a living being of the earth.

   • «تَأْكُلُ مِنسَأَتَهُۥ» — "eating away his staff" (34:14)

Evidence from the text

Sole use of the first sense, 9:37: "they make it permitted one year and make it inviolable one year, so as to trample the number of what God has made inviolable". The pronoun refers to the postponement: one and the same thing returns every year, and every year they decide its status. The count is given just before: twelve months, four of them inviolable (9:36). The noun, passive in form, names a thing and not a manoeuvre: the postponed time itself.

Warsh reads ٱلنَّسِيُّ, the very form of the word for the forgotten, that of Maryam in 19:23: postponed time is time made to be forgotten.

In 34:14 the مِنسَأَة is Sulayman's staff: "nothing pointed them to his death except a living being of the earth eating away his staff". The text does not link the two uses.

Distinctions

• اخر — to delay, to put off; نسء sets outside the count.

See also

شهر (the count of months from which the deferred is withdrawn)