Quote Originally Posted by Throbert McGee View Post
And for my part, I had no idea that Arabic al-maas was related to Greek adamos -- I assumed that maas was native to Arabic. But it makes sense now that I think about it, because medieval Arabs translated such an enormous number of ancient Greek manuscripts, and it would hardly be surprising if some medieval scribe mistook the Greek negative prefix a- ("not") for the Arabic article al.
I actually didn't know this either (and it could be wrong) - I found it on Wiktionary. That is where I usually go for quick etymology references, since it usually draws from reputable sources like Vasmer.