Compared forms
- Hebrewnînnîn ‘offspring, descendants’ (Gen 21:23; Isa 14:22; Job 18:19); cf. the extended -ūn formation Yəšūrūn ‘Jeshurun, the Upright One’
- Hebrew verbrare n-w-nrare n-w-n ‘produce shoots, get descendants’ at Ps 72:17; HALOT leaves open whether the noun derives from the verb or the verb is denominative
- Semitic morphologymasculine nominative plural *-ūna (Huehnergard 2019, 60–61); Arabic indefinite nominative -un (Fischer 2002, §§141, 147)
Attestations1 cited
Commentary
PL Zf 1, a silver pin: … TA-NU-NI-KI-NA · NI-NU-NI · [?]-I-[?]. NI-NU-NI follows TA-NU-NI-KI-NA tannî qînâ, the imperative and its object, as a vocative noun: nīnūn ‘offspring, descendants’, Heb. nîn ‘descendants’, with the verb nyn ‘to get descendants’ (Ps 72:17; HALOT 696). NI writes nī, NU nū, and the final NI the n with a dead vowel; -ūn is the plural or collective ending, as in Yəšūrūn. Rival: nīn-un, with the Arabic nominative nunation. Weak point: Hebrew has nîn only in the singular, beside neked (HALOT 696). One attestation.