ܝܬܝܪ ܡܢ ܐܪܒܥܝܢ ܓܒܪܝܢ ܡܢܗܘܢ ܢܛܪܝܢ ܠܗ

The above New Testament Aramaic passage reads: 'more than forty men of them are watching him' – in another version, 'are lying in wait for him'. Two words – ܡܢܗܘܢ [mnhun] 'from among them' and ܢܛܪܝܢ [naṭrīn] 'are watching; waiting' (respectively corresponding to Arabic منهم [mínhum] and منتظرون [muntaÐirūn]) – cannot escape the attention of anyone familiar with Levantine, both words representing exact matches of present-day (particularly Mount-Lebanon) منهن [mnhun] 'of them' and ناطرين [naṭrīn] 'are waiting', at once revealing the Aramaic substrate of the latter and pointing to the shift in meaning from the original 'watch' to the more abstract 'wait' (cf. ناطور [naṭūr] 'guard; concierge' vs. ناطر [nāṭir] 'waiting'). English wait itself attests to the same shift, as does its cognate wachten (cf. German/ Middle Dutch wachten 'watch' vs. Modern Dutch wachten 'wait'). The Arabic cognate of Levantine نطر [naṭar] (from Syrian ܢܛܪ [nṭar] 'watch') is نظر [naÐara] 'look' – hence انتظر [intaÐara] 'wait' (literally 'look out for') and ناظر [nāÐir] 'supervisor' (counterpart of Levantine ناطور [naṭūr] 'guard; concierge').