Homonymy in the Persian Word <i>dast</i>

Abstract Proto-Indo-Iranian is envisaged to have had the form *jhasta denoting hand and the root *dans meaning to become skillful, to instruct, to teach. Previous studies have shown that these two forms have surfaced as homophones (both in the form of dast) during the Middle Iranian period, each with distinct meanings during that time. In this article, the authors have tried to explore the semantics of dast in Contemporary Persian through a meticulous examination of classical and contemporary texts. This analysis revealed that Contemporary Persian dast is a case of homonymy, with meanings clustered around two core concepts: hand and skill, power, probability. The article proposes that these dual core meanings may have originated from Proto-Indo-Iranian *dans and *ȷ́ʰasta, two semantically distinct elements, giving rise to an instance of homonymity through historical phonological processes.