@Susan Ahh - I think I get what's troubling. פ׳׳י has yod in the first position, and ל׳׳ה has he in final position. But ע׳׳ע doesn't (necessarily) have ʿayin in second (and third) position ... never thought about it. :)

@Davïd I may be fussier than most about such things, but to me it seems like they're taking a form that encodes a consistent specific meaning and applying it to something completely different, Humpty Dumpty style (oh no!).

But that x''y form has some more general meaning in (modern) Hebrew that I don't get, like in dedications after the name of somebody who's dead...(pulling books off the shelf... ah, Tov, of course): ז׳׳ל. What is that? Presumably there's no paradigmatic ז word into which slot a ל pops.

@Susan According to Wiktionary, it means זכרונו\ה\ם\ן לברכה. I guess the notation just means "this is some kind of shorthand".

@Susan In fact, my question is why BDAG says nothing about the drugs in φαρμακεία, which is different from the LSJ?

@Susan ^^^ Do you really think that should be added to the answer? I guess they might be thought to be participles, but what else do you stick -im on?

@Davïd (predicate) Adjectives!

Participles or otherwise.

Which then don't agree with the noun they modify.

@Susan Ahh!

As in English translation, the question, and the other answer.

@Susan Yeah, but they're not. Should that be clarified? I get the sense that if you know the language, it won't matter -- and if you don't know the language, then it's nonsense anyway. It's pretty clear to me the other answer is operating from the latter position.... =/

@Davïd You may be right. I was in some in between state after I looked at it the first time, and it mattered for my thinking, but maybe nobody else is near that line.