chelek and chaklaut

A friend recently asked me a question about metathesis - the rearranging of letters in a word. Let's take a quick look at an example in Hebrew.

The word helek חלק - "part, portion" derives from the verb חלק - "to divide, share" (according to Klein). He does not connect this root to chalak חלק - "smooth", which he says is related to the Arabic halaqa "he made smooth" which is related to halaqa meaning "he created." Klein also mentions halaqa - "he measured, measured off" as a cognate of חלק meaning "to divide", but again, he doesn't connect the roots. Stahl, however, does connect them, saying that "he created" and "he measured" are related. And if I understand the footnote in Ben Yehuda correctly, he says that the meaning "smooth" could have evolved from a sense "to shave", which would have originally been "to cut, to divide." This sense - of shaving, making smooth - is the source of the halaka חלאקה - the Mizrahi version of the Ashkenazi upsherin,  the ceremony of the first haircut for three year old boys.

Chaklaut חקלאות - "agriculture" and chaklai חקלאי - "agricultural"/ "farmer" are modern Hebrew words coined by David Yellin, formed from the Aramaic words chakal חקל and chakla חקלא, both meaning "field." This Aramaic word is a metathesis of chelek - literally "a portion of land." We find chelek being used for a field in many places, such as Bereshit 33:19 - חלקת השדה chelkat hasadeh - "a portion of the field".

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