What does mean "may your hand be besmeared with dust"?

Question

" تَرِبَتْ يَدَاكَ " has different translations here:

Sahih al-Bukahri:

"(otherwise) you will be a losers"

• then where is "otherwise" in original (arabic) text?

Sunan ibn Majah :

"may your hands be rubbed with dust (i.e., may you prosper)"

• so this has contrariwise meaning i.e. like if dusting of hand is something good. ( also Sunan an-Nasaa-i : "may your hands be rubbed with dust (may you prosper)" ).

if really dusting of hand means good, what logic is here? maybe working much and such getting dust?

What does it mean here? :

"He (the Holy Prophet) said: Let your hand be covered with dust, in what way does her child resemble her?"

and here :

"(and it seemed) as if Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) did not like it (his sitting with the children) and said to him: May your nose he besmeared with dust, ..."

• in these 2 cases i see it is/means scolding. and also general meaning of dust is not positive, but it is something bad. so how can it mean "to prosper" as it is translated in some hadiths?

Answer 1

This expression needed some search ,specially it is 100% fosha, it is not used anymore in modern Arabic.

here the word تربت in the Arabic-Arabic dictionary

and this Arabic Fatwa explained the hadeeth you mentioned. and that is what the fatwa said about the expression تربت يداك

وأما معنى (تربت يداك) فهو في الأصل دعاء معناه: لصقت يداك بالتراب من شدة الفقر إن لم تفعل

ولكن العرب أصبحت تستعمله لمعان أخر كالمعاتبة والإنكار وتعظيم الأمر والحث على الشيء وهذا هو المراد منها في هذا الحديث..

and as for the meaning of (taribat yadak) it was originally a doaa 1 دعاء meaning , may your hand get rubbed with dust "because of poorness" if you are not going to do.....

the old Arabs later get to use this expression to express other things like (blaming, disagreement,stressing the point, encouragement/motivation ) which how it is used in this hadeeth

1 Note: this doaa was an old doaa used by the old Arabs -including the disbelievers- even before the birth of the Prophet PBUH

Answer 2

salam alaikum. I found this explanation in Lane's Lexicon (ll). he had dust or earth in his hand-- this expression has 2 different and opposite meaning.(as a student I have seen several arabic words, one word used to express opposite meaning.) So according to lanes lexicon- this expression can mean : he became so poor that he clave to dust OR his wealth became much, abundant that it became like dust or earth. he became rich-- this is the more known meaning of the verb -ترب - as though he became possessed of wealth equal in quantity to the dust or earth.