قالة

• IPA^(key): /qaː.la/

From قَالَ (qāla, “to say”).

قَالَة • (qāla) f

1. gossip, chit-chat

• → Hausa: ƙala

A Romance borrowing, cognate to French cale, Italian cala, Medieval Latin cola (“harbour”), and probably ultimately of Byzantine Greek origin, as is also plausible for some apparent occidental compounds such as قَلْفَطَ (qalfaṭa, “to caulk”) and Georgian კალატოზი (ḳalaṭozi, “bricklayer”), but we are not sure of the ultimate word, maybe κῶλον (kôlon, “carcass”) relating to the sense of the “hold” or “bilge” of a ship some of the Romance cognates have, or rather “rear-end” Greek κώλος (kólos) later means, maybe κόλος (kólos, “docked, curtailed”), or χᾰλᾰ́ειν (khălắein, “to loose”) if we adduce Medieval Latin calāre (“to let off, to demit, to descend”).

This means it is not related to الْقَالَة (al-qāla, “El Kala”) since that Algerian town was founded for its coral reefs, French écueil.

قَالَة • (qāla) f (plural قَالَات (qālāt))

1. (Northwest Africa) inlet; harbour

• Maltese: qala

A Romance borrowing from the verb calāre (“to let off, to demit, to descend”), since goods were measured, packed and sent off by the ell.

قَالَة • (qāla) f (plural قَالَات (qālāt))

1. (Morocco) ell

A trade term, see of similar origin هَيْدُورَة (haydūra, “sheepskin”) and كَُرْزِيَّة (karziyya, kurziyya, “a kind of fabric, serge or kersey, used to wrap around”), so we dare guess Russian кал (kal), the normal word for human and other ordure in Russian and the original Slavic language, must have arrived as well via naval vessels.

قَالَة • (qāla) f (obsolete)

1. (Morocco) residual dung in a piece of wool

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:براز

• Corriente, Federico, Pereira, Christophe, Vicente, Angeles, editors (2017), Dictionnaire du faisceau dialectal arabe andalou. Perspectives phraséologiques et étymologiques (in French), Berlin: De Gruyter, →ISBN, page 995, only a short entry for the “ell” word with Latin etymology
• Dozy, Reinhart Pieter Anne (1881), “قالة”, in Supplément aux dictionnaires arabes‎^[1] (in French), volume 2, Leiden: E. J. Brill, page 296b
• Høst, Georg Hjersing (1781), Nachrichten von Marokos und Fes: im Lande selbst gesammlet in den Jahren 1760 bis 1768‎^[2] (in German), translated from the original Danish Efterretninger om Marokos og Fes, samlede der i Landene fra 1760 til 1768, Kopenhagen: Christian Gottlob Prost, page 272
• Høst, Georg Hjersing (1781), Nachrichten von Marokos und Fes: im Lande selbst gesammlet in den Jahren 1760 bis 1768‎^[3] (in German), translated from the original Danish Efterretninger om Marokos og Fes, samlede der i Landene fra 1760 til 1768, Kopenhagen: Christian Gottlob Prost, page 277