ἄχι <Semitic; Hellenistic period>
👉 ἄχι, dat. sg. ἄχει, n. – ‘a marsh plant (grass, reed or sedge)’ (LXX: Gen. 41.2 and 18, Is. 19.7, Sir. 40.16), as well as ἄχι (indecl.) n. prob. ‘id.’ (PMG IV 1091 and 1101); cf. also Hsch. α 8876: ἇχι· ὅπου. ἢ χόρτῳ χλωρῷ – “hachi: where. Or green fodder (dat.)”.
⚠ Cf. Hieronym., Comm. in Esaiam 19.5-11: Cumque ab eruditis quaererem, quid hie sermo (scil. achi) significaret, audivi ab Aegyptiis hoc nomine lingua eorum omne quod in palude virens nascitur appellari. – “And when I asked some learned people what this word (scil. achi) means, I heard that the Egyptians in their language call so all plants growing in marsh.”
🅔 An Egyptian loanword – Egyptian ꜣḫ ‘thicket of papyrus’, ꜣḫy ‘kind of plants’ (prob. the same meaning as ꜣḫ), Demotic ꜣẖy ‘thicket of reed’; but note that the Coptic forms ⲁϧⲓ (B) and ⲁⲭⲓ (B) ‘marsh herbage, sedge’ are rather only transliterations of Greek ἄχι. The Egyptian word was also borrowed into Biblical Hebrew as ʾāḥû ‘a marsh plant, sedge’ which is translated as ἄχι in LXX: Gen. 41.2 and 18; cf. also Old Aramaic ʾḥw prob. ‘grass’.
📖 Data: CD: 25; CDD: s.v. ꜣẖy; CDO: s.v. ⲁϩⲣ; DCH: I, 183; DG: 10; DLE: I, 8; DNWSI: 35; GHÄD: 13; HALOT: 30f.; KH: 17 and 491; WÄS: I, 18. Ref.: CED: 17; Charpentier 1981: 36f.; DELC: 21; Fournet 1989: 68f.; Lambdin 1953: 146; Vergote 1959: 59-66; cf. Muss-Arnolt 1892: 116, n. 11; Torallas Tovar 2004: 180.