Qimḥi’s <em>Sefer ha-Shorashim</em>: A Didactic Tool

Less than forty years after Judah ibn Tibbon translated Ibn Janāḥ’s Kitāb al-Uṣūl into Hebrew, David Qimḥi availed himself to write a new dictionary of Hebrew roots, known as Sefer ha-Shorashim. This book achieved great success and consequently overshadowed the work of his predecessor which nevertheless served as a model to Qimḥi. A preliminary research based on the roots starting by the letter ṭet and sameḵ seems to constitute a representative sample for the history of the text. First of all, it allows to better grasp Qimḥi’s motivation for writing a new dictionary. Further, the analysis of this relatively small corpus gives us clues to understand Qimḥi’s lexicological approach to the Hebrew root and his strategy in the organization of each entry