grw

See also: GRW

Egyptian

FWOTD – 29 August 2019

Etymology 1

From gr (“to be still, to be silent”) +‎ -w.

Pronunciation

(modern Egyptological) IPA^(key): /ɡɛruː/
- Conventional anglicization: geru

Noun

m

one who is silent, one who doesn’t talk [Middle Kingdom to New Kingdom]

a calm, dispassionate, and self-effacing person, seen as wisely living according to Maat (virtue/truth/cosmic order) [Middle Kingdom to New Kingdom]

c. 1928–1924 BCE, Stele of Wepwawetaa (Leiden V4/AP 63), lines 9–10:

…

jnk grw mm srw […] ssbq.n nswt ḫnt tꜣwj mḥ-jb.f ḫnt rḫwt.f

I was a silent/dispassionate one among the officials, […] whom the king honored in front of the Two Lands (Egypt), his confidant at the fore of his subjects

c. 1900 BCE, The Instructions of Kagemni (pPrisse/pBN 183) lines 1.1–1.2:

wn ẖn n grw wsḫ st nt hr m mdww
The tent is open to the quiet man; the place of the man calm in speech is broad.^[1]

Usage notes

In the second sense, this word is often followed by epithets such as mꜣꜥ (“just, true”).

Inflection

Declension of grw (masculine)

singular	grw
dual	grwwj
plural	grww

Alternative forms

Alternative hieroglyphic writings of grw

gr

grw

gr

Antonyms

(antonym(s) of “calm and self-effacing person”): wḫꜣ

Etymology 2

Compare the (mostly Old Egyptian) enclitic particle gr.

Pronunciation

(modern Egyptological) IPA^(key): /ɡɛruː/
- Conventional anglicization: geru

Adverb

Alternative forms

Alternative hieroglyphic writings of grw

gr

jgr

gr

[Pyramid Texts]

most common form

occasionally

Descendants

Coptic: ϭⲉ (ce)

References

“gr.w (lemma ID 167800)” and “gr (lemma ID 167740)”, in Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae‎^[1], Corpus issue 18, Web app version 2.1.5, Tonio Sebastian Richter & Daniel A. Werning by order of the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften and Hans-Werner Fischer-Elfert & Peter Dils by order of the Sächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig, 2004–26 July 2023
Erman, Adolf, Grapow, Hermann (1931) Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache‎^[2], volume 5, Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, →ISBN, pages 179.3–179.8, 180.9–180.11
Faulkner, Raymond Oliver (1962) A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, Oxford: Griffith Institute, →ISBN, page 290
James P[eter] Allen (2010) Middle Egyptian: An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs, 2nd edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, pages 94, 263.

^ Alternatively, taking

as imperative (j)m: ‘…the place of the calm man is broad. Don’t speak!’ The first clause can also be interpreted in two different ways. If

represents the preposition n, then ‘The tent is open to the quiet man’; but if it represents the genitival adjective n(j), then ‘The tent of the quiet man is open’. The first interpretation is more appealing semantically, but the second is favored by parallelism with the following clause.

[1] Alternatively, taking

as imperative (j)m: ‘…the place of the calm man is broad. Don’t speak!’ The first clause can also be interpreted in two different ways. If

represents the preposition n, then ‘The tent is open to the quiet man’; but if it represents the genitival adjective n(j), then ‘The tent of the quiet man is open’. The first interpretation is more appealing semantically, but the second is favored by parallelism with the following clause.

[1]