Linguistics Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for professional linguists and others with an interest in linguistic research and theory. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
In a poem of Hafez I found a pun based on the double meaning of دریاب, at once the present (or aorist) stem of دریافتن, and another word for دریا, meaning "the sea". Now it would be great to know, whether these words share a common ancestry or not, since the pun, where the sea is pictured as a receptacle, at least shows a possible confluence of meaning.
If you have the answer, would be great to also learn, how you found it, since I do not know any solid reference for New Persian etymologies.
The word for “sea” occurs across the board in Iranian: Avestan zraiiah-, Old Persian drayah-, Middle Persian drayā(b) (also: zrēh), New Persian daryā; probably cognate with Sanskrit jrayas- ‘expanse’.
The NP verb daryāftan is of course dar + yāftan, so it is not connected with the word for “sea”, except as a poet’s pun.
