جنفاص

اللهجة الشامية الشمالية

جنفاص (noun)

Etymology: Borrowed from Old French chenevas (“canvas”) during the Crusades. Old French ch was an affricate /t͡ʃ/, and medieval ج (j) was also an affricate /d͡ʒ/, making it the closest match (compare قِجّة (ʔijje, “piggy bank”)). Old French then shifted ch to /ʃ/ in the 13th century, coincidentally around the same time as Fall of Acre and the decline of Crusader influence in the Levant, so the borrowing could not have occurred any later than the Crusades.
This is the only secure Crusader loan still in use outside of proper names like Lake Bardawil. Other loans such as فَصَل (faṣal, “vassal”) and بُرْجَاسِيَّة (burjāsiyya, “bourgeoisie”) were terms of art and are now obsolete.
Interestingly, the online dictionary Lughatuna records an Iraqi Arabic چُنفَاص (čunfāṣ) beside the common Iraqi Arabic جُنْفَاص (junfāṣ, “jute, canvas, sackcloth”). The former's voiceless /t͡ʃ/ directly matches Old French ch, but as the Crusader states never extended to Mesopotamia, the form's transmission is uncertain.
Possible explanations for Iraqi Arabic چُنْفَاص (čunfāṣ)
# Medieval Levantine Arabic may have temporarily kept /t͡ʃ/, allowing Levantine traders to carry both variants to Mesopotamia.
# Mesopotamian traders may have come to the Levant and acquired چُنفَاص (čunfāṣ) directly from the French.
# The form may reflect a sporadic devoicing of جُنْفَاص (junfāṣ) without connection to Old French.
Options 1 and 2 assume /t͡ʃ/ existed in Mesopotamian Arabic a millennium ago, and option 1 assumes the same for medieval Levantine Arabic. Both remain uncertain.

Meaning: burlap, sackcloth

From Wiktionary: جنفاص, by Wiktionary contributors, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.