Root · 549 in the Quran · 80 in 20 texts of the library
أتيThe coming of a thing, together with its being brought along and its compliance. (root ty)
تقول أتاني فلان إتيانا وأتيا وأتية وأتوة واحدة ولا
Ibn Fāris, Maqāyīs al-lugha · English rendering AI
The family of the root
Patterns computed · our dataThe words of أ ت ي that our sources attest: the root's letters in green, the added letters in gold.
23 words6 verbs3 verbal nouns2 participles2 places and instruments1 intensive or elative8 other nouns1 plural
- أَتَىhe or it came
- اتَىhe came with, or brought, him, or it
- آتِيcoming; following
- إِيتَاء—
- تَأَتَّىit (an affair, T, Mgh, Msb, K, or a thing, S, M) was, or became, prepared, …
The whole family7 groups, by pattern; tap a pattern to see what it does
Verbs6أَتَى · اتَى · تَأَتَّى
The root as an action: the bare Form I, and the Forms made by adding letters before, inside or after the root.grammar →
Form I vowels: فَعَلَ يَفْعِلُ (a – i; the imperfect from Lane's “aor.”)
- أَتَىhe or it cameLaneForm IQurʾān ×264library ×59LaneIbn Fāris
- اتَىhe came with, or brought, him, or itLaneForm IVQurʾān ×271LaneIbn Fāris
- تَأَتَّىit (an affair, T, Mgh, Msb, K, or a thing, S, M) was, or became, prepared, …LaneForm Vlibrary ×3Lane
- أتّىhe smoothed, made easy, or prepared, the way, course, passage, or channel, of …LaneForm IILaneIbn Fāris
Verbal nouns3إِيتَاء · إِتْيَان · تَأْتِيَة
The action itself, named as a noun (maṣdar).grammar →
Participles2مَأْتِيّ · مُؤْتَى
The one who does it, and the one it is done to.grammar →
Place, time and instrument2مَأْتَى · مِئْتاء
Where or when it happens, and what it is done with: the m- nouns.grammar →
Intensives, qualities and the elative1إِتْيَان
The quality carried far, held as a trait, or compared.grammar →
- إِتْيَانcomingLaneintensive (faʿlān)library ×2LaneIbn Fāris
Other nouns8آتِي · آتِيَة · أَتَاء
Nouns on other patterns; their meaning is learned word by word.grammar →
Reference
Why this shape?What each of the 15 patterns does
What each pattern does. The pattern gives a tendency, not a rule: many words have drifted into meanings of their own.
The pattern machinePour the root into a pattern; see whether the word exists
Choose a pattern; the root's letters pour into it. Then see whether the word exists in our sources. The machine makes shapes; only usage makes words.
Not in our sources. A possible shape, not a word we can show: the Quran, the library and Lane do not have it for this root.
Place noun with -a. The place noun with the feminine -a. Sometimes it is only a variant of mafʿal; often it names the place where a thing is found in abundance (maʾsada, 'a place full of lions'). So maktab is the place of writing, and maktaba, where writings are gathered: a library, a bookshop. Our summary AI
But: maktaba is not in our classical dictionaries for k-t-b: Lane and al-Jawharī give maktab ('a school'), none gives maktaba. Its sense of 'library, bookshop' fits the pattern of abundance, but that is our reading of the pattern, not a classical entry. Many mafʿala words are single items of usage (maqbara 'cemetery'), which the grammarians call heard, not formed by rule.
The grammarians on this pattern (4)
ما يكون مفعلة لازمة لها الهاء والفتحة … وذلك إذا أردت أن تكثر الشيء بالمكان، وذلك قولك: أرض مسبعة، ومأسدة
Chapter on what is mafʿala, with the -a and the a-vowel always: that is when you mean that a thing abounds in a place, as you say 'a land of many beasts of prey (masbaʿa), of many lions (maʾsada)' AI
Sībawayh (d. c. 180/796), al-Kitāb, ed. ʿAbd al-Salām Hārūn, 3rd ed. (Cairo: al-Khānjī, 1988), 4:94 · OpenITI line 21027–21028 ↗ · on this site · OpenITI RELEASE v2025.1.9, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
و نحو المظنة و المقبرة فتحا و ضما ليس بقياس
and words like maẓinna and maqbara (with a or u) are not by rule AI
Ibn al-Ḥājib (d. 646/1249), al-Shāfiya fī ʿilm al-taṣrīf, ed. Ḥasan Aḥmad al-ʿUthmān (Mecca: al-Maktaba al-Makkiyya, 1995), 1:30 · OpenITI line 223 ↗ · on this site · OpenITI RELEASE v2025.1.9, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
- “designate the place where the object signified by the noun from which they are formed, is found in large numbers or quantities” Wright, Grammar I, §247, p. 148 ↗ · on nouns of abundance, maf'ala · 3rd ed. (Cambridge, 1896) · public domain
- “Nouns of time and place not unfrequently take the feminine form” Wright, Grammar I, §225, p. 128 ↗ · on maf'ala as a variant of maf'al · 3rd ed. (Cambridge, 1896) · public domain
This root has a weak or doubled letter, so real words change shape (qāla → qāʾil, not qāwil); the machine pours the letters in as they are, and matches attested words by their regular pattern.
About thisWhat “attested” means here; the sources
Attested means found in our data: the Quranic Arabic Corpus (lemmas, verb Forms, participles, verbal nouns, plurals), the library's words (automatic analysis), Lane's Lexicon (his headwords, the Forms he numbers, the verbal nouns and plurals he names) and Ibn Fāris's entry. Nothing is generated for this list. Meanings are Lane's first gloss in his entry, or else the analyser's gloss (“auto”). Vowelling follows the corpus, then Lane, then the analyser; verbs are given in the regular perfect. Lane's Lexicon thins out after qāf, and a few of his entries cover several roots at once: those roots show no Lane. The patterns, written with ف ع ل, are computed by us.
The dictionaries
English: AI translation AIal-Khalīl · 170You say: atānī fulān — atyan, ityānan, atyatan, for a single instance.
al-Khalīl b. Aḥmad (d. c. 170/786), Kitāb al-ʿAyn. The first Arabic dictionary, arranged by permutations of the root letters.
AI AI translation of the Arabic belowIbn Fāris · 395You say: atānī fulān (أتاني فلان) — ityānan, atyan, atyatan, and atwatan — for a single occurrence;
Ibn Fāris (d. 395/1004), Maqāyīs al-Lugha. Seeks each root's original sense (aṣl).
AI AI translation of the Arabic belowal-Rāghib · 502Al-ityān: coming with ease.
al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī (d. c. 502/1108), al-Mufradāt. Quranic vocabulary, from core sense to Quranic usage.
AI AI translation of the Arabic belowLisān · 711Al-ityān: coming. Ataytuhu — atyan, atyan, ityan, ityānan, ityānatan, and maʾtāh: I came to him.
Ibn Manẓūr (d. 711/1311), Lisān al-ʿArab. The great compendium of the earlier dictionaries (entry shortened).
AI AI translation of the Arabic belowLane · 1876English, synthesising the classical dictionaries.
E. W. Lane (d. 1876), An Arabic-English Lexicon. English, synthesising the classical dictionaries.
Lane, Arabic-English Lexiconread Lane's entry online ↗
The same letters, turned
The same three letters in all six orders. Choose one.
أ ت ي
الهمزة والتاء والواو والألف والياء يدل على مجئ الشيء وإصحابه وطاعته الأتو الاستقامة في السير
ʾ-t-w-ʾ-y: denotes the coming of something, its accompanying, and its obedience; "al-ataw" is straightness in gait. AI
Ibn Fāris ↗Lisān ↗Lane ↗Quran ×549
an entry in Ibn Fārislater sources onlyin none of them
Do these six share one core meaning?
Reference
About thisal-Khalīl, Ibn Jinnī, Ibn Fāris; the counts across the dictionary
al-Khalīl (d. c. 170/786), Kitāb al-ʿAyn, as transmitted by al-Layth: a two-letter word “turns in two ways”, a three-letter word “in six ways” (masdūsa), four letters in 24, five in 120; “its used forms are written down and its unused ones dropped” (line 975 ↗). The dictionary is built on this: each chapter takes a set of letters and names which orders are used (mustaʿmal) and which unused (muhmal). The ring shows that verdict, from the chapter heading as edited (documented in the text; how much of the book is al-Khalīl's own is disputed).
A reported total. al-Suyūṭī transmits, from Ḥamza al-Iṣfahānī, that al-Khalīl put the possible forms, used and unused, of two to five letters at 12,305,412 (al-Muzhir, line 1347 ↗). It is reported, not found in the ʿAyn. It equals exactly the arrangements of 2 to 5 different letters out of 28 (756 + 19,656 + 491,400 + 11,793,600); the breakdown printed beside it is corrupt, and al-Zubaydī's count, given next, differs (6,659,400).
Ibn Jinnī (d. 392/1002), al-Khaṣāʾiṣ, names the greater derivation (al-ishtiqāq al-akbar): bind a three-letter root and its six orders to one meaning, and bring stray members back “by the subtlety of the craft and interpretation” (line 7536 ↗). He says himself that it does not hold for every root (line 167 ↗; line 7603 ↗).
Ibn Fāris (d. 395/1004) gives each root its own aṣl and treats a rearranged word as maqlūb, “turned round”, and so not a root of its own: “j-b-dh is not a root, because it is a single word, turned round” (Maqāyīs, line 6147 ↗). The ring sets his aṣl for each order side by side; whether they meet is the question.
Neighbours on the ring differ by one swap of two letters.
The critique. A source quoted by al-Suyūṭī calls the greater derivation Ibn Jinnī's innovation, “not relied on in the language” (al-Muzhir, line 6159 ↗).
The other axis. The root's letters also go into patterns that keep their order and change the frame: the patterns (awzān) and the verb Forms I–X.
Across Ibn Fāris's dictionary. Of the 2,300 possible sets of three different sound letters (no hamza, w or y), 1,021 have at least one order as an entry. How many of their six orders are entries:
- 1 of 6319
- 2 of 6218
- 3 of 6164
- 4 of 6155
- 5 of 6107
- 6 of 658
- 1 of 6148
- 2 of 6108
- 3 of 6157
- 4 of 6179
- 5 of 6111
- 6 of 643
Of the orders al-Khalīl calls used, 2,097 are entries in Ibn Fāris and 267 are not; 17 that he calls unused are entries in Ibn Fāris.
Attested here means found in our digital texts (Ibn Fāris, Lisān al-ʿArab, Lane, the Quranic Arabic Corpus), with w and y kept apart and hamza spellings merged; it is our data, not a classical verdict. English beside the Arabic is AI translation. Sources and grades: docs/research/root-permutations.md.
Letters & sound
- أhamzadeep in the throat · voiced, stopSīb. · I. Jinnī
- تtāʾtongue-tip, roots of the teeth · voiceless, stopSīb. · I. Jinnī
- يyāʾmiddle of the tongue · voiced, in betweenSīb. · I. Jinnī
How each letter is made, in brief, from Sībawayh's and Ibn Jinnī's own sentences (linked); their words are under Reference.
Sharing two of its three letters (computed; kinship of form, not of meaning)
Reference
How it is madeSībawayh and Ibn Jinnī · phonetics
English throughout: AI translation of the Arabic AI
أ
فأقصاها مخرجا: الهمزة والهاء والألف
The furthest of them [the three in the throat] in place: the hamza, the hāʾ and the alif. Sībawayh, line 26548 ↗
فأولها من أسفله وأقصاه، مخرج الهمزة والألف والهاء، هكذا يقول سيبويه
The first of them [in the throat], from its lowest and furthest part, is the place of the hamza, the alif and the hāʾ: so Sībawayh says. Ibn Jinnī, line 965 ↗
ت
ومما بين طرف اللسان وأصول الثنايا مخرج الطاء، والدال، والتاء
From between the tip of the tongue and the roots of the front teeth is the place of the ṭāʾ, the dāl and the tāʾ. Sībawayh, line 26559 ↗
ومما بين طرف اللسان وأصول الثنايا، مخرج الطاء والدال والتاء
From between the tip of the tongue and the roots of the front teeth is the place of the ṭāʾ, the dāl and the tāʾ. Ibn Jinnī, line 982 ↗
ي
ومن وسط اللسان بينه وبين وسط الحنك الأعلى مخرج الجيم والشين والياء
From the middle of the tongue, between it and the middle of the upper palate, is the place of the jīm, the shīn and the yāʾ. Sībawayh, line 26553 ↗
ومن وسط اللسان بينه وبين وسط الحنك الأعلى، مخرج الجيم والشين والياء
From the middle of the tongue, between it and the middle of the upper palate, is the place of the jīm, the shīn and the yāʾ. Ibn Jinnī, line 974 ↗
Sībawayh, al-Kitāb (ed. Hārūn) and Ibn Jinnī, Sirr ṣināʿat al-iʿrāb; OpenITI digital texts (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). Full credits on each letter's page.
In the Breath of the All-MercifulIbn ʿArabī · metaphysics
English throughout: AI translation of the Arabic AI
أ
Nature (ch. 2)
وإلا الهاء والهمزة فإنهما باردتان رطبتان
And except hāʾ and hamza, for these two are cold and moist.
Ibn ʿArabī, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, line 2583ت
Spheres of its simples (ch. 2): 10 line 2573 ↗
Nature (ch. 2)
المرتبة العشرية فحروفها حارة يابسة
The tenfold rank: its letters are hot and dry.
Ibn ʿArabī, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, line 2582ي
Level of existence: السماء الأولى · The First Heaven
Divine Name: الرب · The Lord (al-Rabb)
Lunar mansion: الخرتان · al-Kharatān
Futūḥāt ch. 198, line 64500Spheres of its simples (ch. 2): 10 line 2573 ↗
Nature (ch. 2)
المرتبة العشرية فحروفها حارة يابسة
The tenfold rank: its letters are hot and dry.
Ibn ʿArabī, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, line 2582Meaning by vowelal-Dabbāgh · a visionary claim about a primordial “Syriac”, not historical Syriac
English throughout: AI translation of the Arabic AI
أ
With fatḥa ـَ
فهي إشارة إلى جميع الأشياء قلت أو كثرت، وتكون الإشارة في بعض الأحيان من المتكلم إلى ذاته ونفسه، وهذه الإشارة سالمة من القبض.
It is an indication of all things, whether few or many. At times the indication is from the speaker to his own essence and self, and this indication is free of contraction (qabḍ).
With ḍamma ـُ
فهي إشارة إلى الشيء القريب القليل.
It is an indication of the near, small thing.
With kasra ـِ
فهي إشارة إلى الشيء القريب المناسب.
It is an indication of the near, fitting (congruent) thing.
ت
With fatḥa ـَ
فهي اسم للخير الكثير العظيم.
It is a name for abundant, great good.
With ḍamma ـُ
فهي اسم للقليل البارز.
It is a name for the small, protruding/manifest thing.
With kasra ـِ
فهي اسم لما صنع وأبرز.
It is a name for what has been made and brought forth.
ي
With fatḥa ـَ
فهي للنداء، وقد يؤكد بها.
It is for the vocative (calling), and it may be used for emphasis.
With ḍamma ـُ
فهي إشارة إلى الشيء الذي لا يثبت كالبرق ونحوه.
It is an indication of the thing that does not remain fixed, like lightning and the like.
With kasra ـِ
فهي إشارة إلى الشيء الذي يستحيا به أو يستحيا منه كالعورة.
It is an indication of the thing that causes shame, or of which one is ashamed, like the private parts.
Two-letter nucleus11 roots in Ibn Fāris’s chapterء ت
Ibn Fāris groups his roots under two-letter chapters (“the X and the Y and what makes them three”). These are the roots of this root's chapter with the core sense he gives each. Setting them side by side is our juxtaposition; he does not himself draw a shared meaning. His chapter heading, line 541 ↗
- أتلالهمزة والتاء واللام يدل على أصل واحد وهو البطء والتثاقلL542
- أتنالهمزة والتاء والنون أصل واحد وهو الأنثى من الحمر أو شيء استعير له هذا الاسمL558
- أتهالهمزة والتاء والهاءL569
- أتوالهمزة والتاء والواو والألف والياء يدل على مجئ الشيء وإصحابه وطاعته الأتو الاستقامة في السيرL570
- أتىتقول أتاني فلان إتيانا وأتيا وأتية وأتوة واحدة ولاQ 549 · L581
- أتبالهمزة والتاء والباء أصل واحد وهو شيء يشتمل به الإبط قميص غير مخيط الجانبينL612
- أثرالهمزة والثاء والراء له ثلاثة أصول تقديم الشيء وذكر الشيء ورسم الشيء الباقيQ 21 · L622
- أثفالهمزة والثاء والفاء يدل على التجمع والثباتL672
- أثمالهمزة والثاء والميم تدل على أصل واحد وهو البطء والتأخرQ 48 · L711
- أثنالهمزة والثاء والنون ليس بأصل وإنما جاءت فيه كلمة من الإبدال يقولون الأثن لغة في الوثن ويقولون الأثنة حرجة الطلح وقد شرطنا في أول كتابنا هذا ألا نقيس L721
- أثوىالهمزة والثاء والواو والياء أصل واحد تختلط الواو فيه بالياء ويقولون أثى عليه يأثي إثاوة وإثاية وأثوا وأثيا إذا نم عليه وينشدون — ولا أكون لكم ذا نيرب L724
In the sister scriptsHebrew א ת יSyriac ܐ ܬ ܝ
| Arabic | أ ت ي |
| Hebrew | א ת י |
| Syriac | ܐ ܬ ܝ |
| Ancient South Arabian (musnad) | 𐩱 𐩩 𐩺 |
| Phoenician | 𐤀 𐤕 𐤉 |
Letter for letter, by the regular sound correspondences of the Semitic languages (Arabic keeps several sounds the others merged). This shows how the root would be spelled; whether a related word exists is a separate question, answered in the Semitic lens. Where an Arabic sibilant (s, sh) continues two older sounds, both spellings are shown.
Lenses
AIClassical lexiconal-Khalīl treats the adjacent form al-atw as a steady, swift camel-gait and glosses al-ītāʾ simply as al-iʿṭāʾ, 'giving' — already splitting the root's two poles, coming and bringing/giving.well attested
The lexicographers in chronological order, from al-Khalīl to Lane.
al-Khalīl treats the adjacent form al-atw as a steady, swift camel-gait and glosses al-ītāʾ simply as al-iʿṭāʾ, 'giving' — already splitting the root's two poles, coming and bringing/giving. Ibn Fāris's entry (paired with أتو) fixes the core sense as the coming of a thing together with its being brought along and its compliance (iṣḥābuhu wa-ṭāʿatuhu), extended to al-itāwa, tribute or tax that is 'brought' from a people. al-Rāghib distinguishes ityān as 'coming with ease,' applicable to the coming of an entity, a command, or a plan, in both good and evil senses, citing Qur'an 6:40 and 16:1. Ibn Manẓūr and Lane mainly preserve the grammatical apparatus — imperfect yaʾtī, apocopated imperative ti, verbal nouns ityān, atw, utiyy — the descriptive semantics having already stabilized by al-Rāghib.
Draws on: al-Khalīl · Ibn Fāris · al-Rāghib · Lane
- Ibn Fāris, Maqāyīs al-Lugha, s.v. أتو
- Wiktionary, Appendix:Arabic roots/ء_ت_ي ↗
Letters & soundal-Dabbāgh reads tāʾ as marking abundant, great good, and yāʾ as the letter of address or vocative emphasis — both compatible with a root whose two poles are giving (a good bestowed) and coming toward (an approach, as in a summons).speculative
What the theorists of sound symbolism would say of these letters. Speculative by nature.
al-Dabbāgh reads tāʾ as marking abundant, great good, and yāʾ as the letter of address or vocative emphasis — both compatible with a root whose two poles are giving (a good bestowed) and coming toward (an approach, as in a summons). Ibn ʿArabī's letter-cosmology assigns yāʾ to the First Heaven, near the start of the cosmic ladder, apt for a letter closing a root about arrival. No meaning is supplied for hamzah in either source for this root. This is suggestive sound-symbolism at most; mainstream historical linguistics does not derive lexical meaning from individual radicals this way.
Draws on: al-Dabbāgh · Ibn ʿArabī letters-in-the-Breath
Root structureIn Ibn Fāris's arrangement أتي sits among hamza-tāʾ neighbors أتل (a slow, sluggish gait), أتن (the she-ass), أته, and the closely fused أتو (steady swift gait), with أتب (an unstitched garment) just beyond.plausible
The two-letter nucleus (Ibn Fāris's own chapters) and the permutations of the letters (Ibn Jinnī).
In Ibn Fāris's arrangement أتي sits among hamza-tāʾ neighbors أتل (a slow, sluggish gait), أتن (the she-ass), أته, and the closely fused أتو (steady swift gait), with أتب (an unstitched garment) just beyond. Of the formal permutations of ا-ت-ي, only أتي itself carries the corpus's 549 occurrences; أيت, يأت and يتأ are both unattested and not reckoned as roots, while تأي and تيا are counted as roots in principle but carry no Qur'anic use. One permutation absorbing the whole semantic field is exactly what Ibn Fāris's method predicts for a basic, high-frequency root; there is no plausible case here for Ibn Jinnī's greater derivation linking أتي to a distinct sibling sense.
Draws on: maqayis-nucleus · permutations
Semitic kin & loanwordsArabic ʾatā/ītā 'to come' continues a genuine West Semitic root ʾ-t-w/y, reflected in Aramaic and Syriac ʾtā (the ordinary verb 'to come,' Aramaic's counterpart to Hebrew bôʾ) and in Biblical Hebrew ʾātâ/ʾātāh, a rarer, largely poetic synonym of bôʾ.well attested
Cognates in the sister languages, and whether the word was borrowed.
Arabic ʾatā/ītā 'to come' continues a genuine West Semitic root ʾ-t-w/y, reflected in Aramaic and Syriac ʾtā (the ordinary verb 'to come,' Aramaic's counterpart to Hebrew bôʾ) and in Biblical Hebrew ʾātâ/ʾātāh, a rarer, largely poetic synonym of bôʾ. This is inherited cognate vocabulary rather than a loan in either direction. Arabic's causative āta/ītāʾ 'to give, bestow' (literally 'to cause to come to someone') plausibly reflects an old semantic extension paralleled in outline elsewhere in the family. No confident Akkadian or Gəʿez cognate is available for this sense.
Draws on: Hebrew · Aramaic/Syriac
- Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon, s.v. ʾtā (V) (link not verified)
- Brown–Driver–Briggs, s.v. אתה
Quranic exegesisThe root's 549 occurrences split along the line al-Rāghib draws: the plain verb atā for 'coming' (of punishment, of the Hour, of God's command) and the hamza-form ātā for two-object 'giving' (God gives kingship, wisdom, the Book, mercy).well attested
How the classical exegetes read the word in the Quran.
The root's 549 occurrences split along the line al-Rāghib draws: the plain verb atā for 'coming' (of punishment, of the Hour, of God's command) and the hamza-form ātā for two-object 'giving' (God gives kingship, wisdom, the Book, mercy). On verses like 16:1, 'atā amru Allāh,' exegetes read the past tense as expressing the certainty of a still-future event, treated grammatically as already arrived. In the challenge-verse 2:23, 'fa-ʾtū bi-sūratin min mithlihi,' atā carries the sense of producing or bringing forth, not mere physical coming. Verses such as 2:43 and 2:53, with ātū l-zakāta and ātaynā Mūsā l-kitāb, exemplify the giving-sense the tradition treats as basic to the derived form.
Draws on: al-Ṭabarī · al-Zamakhsharī · al-Rāzī · al-Rāghib
Akbarian readingIn Faṣṣ Ādam, Ibn ʿArabī uses the passive idiom 'min ayna utiya ʿalā man utiya ʿalayhi' — from where was he come upon, the one upon whom it was come — to trace the point at which a fault or admonition reaches its subject, glossing God's reproach to the angels through Adam's case.plausible
The word in Ibn ʿArabī's text and terminology.
In Faṣṣ Ādam, Ibn ʿArabī uses the passive idiom 'min ayna utiya ʿalā man utiya ʿalayhi' — from where was he come upon, the one upon whom it was come — to trace the point at which a fault or admonition reaches its subject, glossing God's reproach to the angels through Adam's case. The idiom extends the root's basic sense of coming-to/upon into a technical way of asking after the origin of a lapse. No separate Iṣṭilāḥ entry for this root appears in Ibn ʿArabī's technical vocabulary; its Akbarian use stays close to the ordinary Qur'anic sense of 'coming upon.'
Draws on: Faṣṣ Ādam
Reference