وَإِلَّا فَرَمَى اللَّهُ جَفْنِي بِالْعَمَشِ، وَخَدِّي بِالنَّمَشِ
Otherwise, may God afflict my eyelid with eye trouble and my cheek with spots.
ʿAmash denotes an eye ailment; namash spots or marks on the cheek. The near-rhyme turns beauty into its imagined opposite inside the elder’s elaborate oath.
The words heighten the drama of threatened disfigurement. They belong to an oath proposed by a litigant, not to a report that either condition actually occurred or to a complete treatment of oath law.
Semantic distinction exercise
What is the correct contrast between ʿamash and namash?