Noun of place from the verb سَجَدَ (sajada, “to bow down”), from the root س ج د (s j d). Likely borrowed from a regional Aramaic term for a place of worship, attested in Nabataean Aramaic 𐢓𐢖𐢄𐢅𐢀 (msgdʾ) and in Imperial Aramaic 𐡌𐡎𐡂𐡃𐡀 (msgdʾ) already in the 5th century BCE, the emphatic state of which seems to underlie some of the Romance descendants.