Abstract The impact of Arabic and Ancient North Arabian on the Nabataean corpus is well known. While Arabisms in the Nabataean inscriptions have received significant attention, the small, yet crucial corpus of Nabataean papyri remains relatively understudied in this regard. In this study, we reassess the possible North Arabian loanwords, especially those suggested by the first editors of the papyri and by Ada Yardeni in various separate studies. Based on the criteria of phonology, morphology, and attestation, we conclude that roughly half of the suggested examples cannot plausibly be attributed to borrowing from Arabic or other North Arabian languages. The low but significant number of remaining, plausible Arabisms strongly cluster in the semantic field of legal and financial technology, supporting the view that Arabic influence on Nabataean may have been more restricted in scope than has long been thought.
Suchard et al. (Thu,) studied this question.