Root · 0 in the Quran · 54 in 19 texts of the library
بددseparation and the widening of distance between two things. (root bdd)
الباء والدال في المضاعف أصل واحد وهو التفرق وتباعد ما بين الشيئين
Ibn Fāris, Maqāyīs al-lugha · English rendering AI
The family of the root
Patterns computed · our dataThe words of ب د د that our sources attest: the root's letters in green, the added letters in gold.
23 words8 verbs2 verbal nouns2 participles1 intensive or elative10 other nouns
- مُبَدِّدsquanderer; scatterer
- بَدَّدَhe separated, disunited, dispersed, or dissipated
- أَبَدَّhe divided among them the gift, giving to each of them his lot, or share, or …
- تَبَدَّدَit (a thing, S, M, L, and a people, or company of men, T, L) became …
- تَبَادَّthey removed to a distance, one from another
The whole family5 groups, by pattern; tap a pattern to see what it does
Verbs8بَدَّ · بَدَّدَ · بَادَّ
The root as an action: the bare Form I, and the Forms made by adding letters before, inside or after the root.grammar →
Verbal nouns2بَدَد · تَبْدِيد
The action itself, named as a noun (maṣdar).grammar →
Participles2مُبَدَّد · مُبَدِّد
The one who does it, and the one it is done to.grammar →
- مُبَدَّدunited state of affairsLanepassive, Form IILane
- مُبَدِّدsquanderer; scattererautoactive, Form IVlibrary ×1
Reference
Why this shape?What each of the 14 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 · 170Al-budd (البد): a house containing idols and images;
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 belowal-Jawharī · 393Badahu yabudduhu baddan (بده يبده بدا): he dispersed it.
al-Jawharī (d. c. 393/1003), al-Ṣiḥāḥ. Admits only usage he judged sound.
AI AI translation of the Arabic belowIbn Fāris · 395The bāʾ and dāl in the doubled root (المضاعف) have a single underlying meaning: separation (al-tafarruq) and the distancing between two things.
Ibn Fāris (d. 395/1004), Maqāyīs al-Lugha. Seeks each root's original sense (aṣl).
AI AI translation of the Arabic belowLisān · 711Al-tabdīd (التبديد): dispersal;
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 their orders. Choose one.
ب د د
الباء والدال في المضاعف أصل واحد وهو التفرق وتباعد ما بين الشيئين
b-d in the doubled root: one root, which is dispersal and the separation between two things. AI
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
- بbāʾbetween the lips · voiced, stopSīb. · I. Jinnī
- دdāltongue-tip, roots of the teeth · voiced, stopSīb. · I. Jinnī
- دdāltongue-tip, roots of the teeth · voiced, stopSīb. · 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
ب
ومما بين الشفتين مخرج الباء، والميم، والواو
From between the two lips is the place of the bāʾ, the mīm and the wāw. Sībawayh, line 26563 ↗
ومما بين الشفتين مخرج الباء والميم والواو
From between the two lips is the place of the bāʾ, the mīm and the wāw. Ibn Jinnī, line 986 ↗
د
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 ↗
د
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 ↗
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
ب
Level of existence: الجن · the jinn
Divine Name: اللطيف · al-Laṭīf, the Subtle
Lunar mansion: الفرع المقدم · al-Farʿ al-Muqaddam
Futūḥāt ch. 198, line 62118Spheres 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 2582د
Level of existence: السماء الدنيا · the lowest heaven (al-samāʾ al-dunyā)
Divine Name: المبين · the Clarifier (al-Mubīn)
Lunar mansion: الأكليل · al-Iklīl
Futūḥāt ch. 198, line 64682Spheres 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 2582د
Level of existence: السماء الدنيا · the lowest heaven (al-samāʾ al-dunyā)
Divine Name: المبين · the Clarifier (al-Mubīn)
Lunar mansion: الأكليل · al-Iklīl
Futūḥāt ch. 198, line 64682Spheres 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
ب
With fatḥa ـَ
فهي إشارة إلى الشيء الذي هو في غاية العز أو في غاية الذل.
It is an indication of the thing that is at the utmost of might or at the utmost of abasement.
With ḍamma ـُ
فهي إشارة معها قبض.
It is an indication accompanied by contraction (qabḍ).
With kasra ـِ
فهي إشارة إلى ما دخل أو هو داخل على الذات.
It is an indication of what has entered, or is entering, upon the self.
د
With fatḥa ـَ
فهي إشارة إلى خارج عن الذات.
It is an indication of something external to the self.
With ḍamma ـُ
فهي إشارة إلى ما هو قليل أو قبيح ومعه غضب فيهما.
It is an indication of what is small or ugly, accompanied by anger in both cases.
With kasra ـِ
فهي إشارة إلى ما في الذات أو إلى ما هو داخل عليها أو إلى ما هو قريب منها.
It is an indication of what is in the self, or what is entering upon it, or what is near to it.
د
With fatḥa ـَ
فهي إشارة إلى خارج عن الذات.
It is an indication of something external to the self.
With ḍamma ـُ
فهي إشارة إلى ما هو قليل أو قبيح ومعه غضب فيهما.
It is an indication of what is small or ugly, accompanied by anger in both cases.
With kasra ـِ
فهي إشارة إلى ما في الذات أو إلى ما هو داخل عليها أو إلى ما هو قريب منها.
It is an indication of what is in the self, or what is entering upon it, or what is near to it.
In the sister scriptsHebrew ב ד דSyriac ܒ ܕ ܕ
| Arabic | ب د د |
| Hebrew | ב ד ד |
| Syriac | ܒ ܕ ܕ |
| Ancient South Arabian (musnad) | 𐩨 𐩵 𐩵 |
| Phoenician | 𐤁 𐤃 𐤃 |
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 (al-ʿAyn) gives abadd (one whose limbs, especially arms or thighs, stand apart), the idiom lā budda ('no escape,' inevitability), tabaddud (dispersal), and bidād (a felt pad placed to keep a saddle from a sore spot, i.e.well attested
The lexicographers in chronological order, from al-Khalīl to Lane.
Al-Khalīl (al-ʿAyn) gives abadd (one whose limbs, especially arms or thighs, stand apart), the idiom lā budda ('no escape,' inevitability), tabaddud (dispersal), and bidād (a felt pad placed to keep a saddle from a sore spot, i.e. something interposed to keep parts apart). Al-Jawharī (al-Ṣiḥāḥ) adds baddahu 'he dispersed it,' al-bidda as both 'share/portion' and 'strength,' the ḥadīth abdīhim tamratan tamratan 'distribute to them a date each,' and istabadda bi- 'he monopolized, acted alone with' a thing; he also records bidād as single combat, man against man. Ibn Manẓūr (Lisān al-ʿArab) consolidates these under tabdīd/tafrīq and preserves Ḥassān ibn Thābit's verse on horses coming bidād, i.e. scattered, each rider separate. Ibn Fāris (Maqāyīs) treats all of this as one coherent sense — separation and the gap between two things — deriving lā budda itself from 'no parting from it,' hence 'inevitable,' and explaining bidbid (a vast waste) and al-bādān (the inner thighs) by the same image of an opened gap. Lane confirms baddun as spreading the legs apart and as withdrawing a companion far off.
Draws on: cayn · sihah · lisan · Ibn Fāris · Lane
- Ibn Fāris, Maqāyīs al-Lugha, s.v. بدد
- Lane, s.v. بدّ
Letters & soundIn the given letter-correspondences, bāʾ is assigned to the jinn and, per al-Dabbāgh, indicates something at an extreme of might or extreme of abasement;speculative
What the theorists of sound symbolism would say of these letters. Speculative by nature.
In the given letter-correspondences, bāʾ is assigned to the jinn and, per al-Dabbāgh, indicates something at an extreme of might or extreme of abasement; dāl is assigned to the lowest heaven and indicates something external to the self. A speculative reading would see in baddun (separation, externalization, the setting of one thing apart from another) an echo of dāl's 'externality to the self,' intensified by bāʾ's extremity — but this is letter-symbolism, not linguistic derivation, and should be held only loosely.
Draws on: akbari198 · dabbagh_fatha
Root structureNo nucleus-neighbor chapter is given for this root in Ibn Fāris's arrangement.plausible
The two-letter nucleus (Ibn Fāris's own chapters) and the permutations of the letters (Ibn Jinnī).
No nucleus-neighbor chapter is given for this root in Ibn Fāris's arrangement. Of its three possible letter-orders, only baddad (bdd) is attested in the classical lexicon; the reversals dabad (dbd) and dabad-repeated (ddb) are unattested, offering no ground for Ibn Jinnī-style greater-derivation claims here — the geminate structure (bdd) itself, doubling the second radical, iconically reinforces the sense of repeated separation (share by share, tamratan tamratan) that the lexicographers describe.
Draws on: permutations
Semitic kin & loanwordsHebrew preserves the same root in bādād (בָּדָד), 'alone, solitary, in isolation,' as in Lamentations 3:28 ('yēšēb bādād', 'let him sit alone') — a clear cognate sharing the core sense of separation/isolation found in the Arabic root.plausible
Cognates in the sister languages, and whether the word was borrowed.
Hebrew preserves the same root in bādād (בָּדָד), 'alone, solitary, in isolation,' as in Lamentations 3:28 ('yēšēb bādād', 'let him sit alone') — a clear cognate sharing the core sense of separation/isolation found in the Arabic root. No distinctive Aramaic, Akkadian, Geʿez, or South Arabian cognate is confidently attested beyond this Hebrew parallel. There is no reason to treat the Arabic word as a loan; it is native Semitic vocabulary.
Draws on: hebrew-cognate
- BDB, s.v. בדד
Akbarian readingIn the Faṣṣ Ādam excerpts, this root appears only in the grammaticalized idiom lā budda ('it must be the case that...'), never in its concrete sense of scattering or separation.plausible
The word in Ibn ʿArabī's text and terminology.
In the Faṣṣ Ādam excerpts, this root appears only in the grammaticalized idiom lā budda ('it must be the case that...'), never in its concrete sense of scattering or separation. It marks logical necessity at exactly the hinge-points of Ibn ʿArabī's argument for the Necessary Existent's ghinā and the world's iftiqār — 'wa-lā budda an yakūna l-mustanid ilayhi wājiba l-wujūdi li-dhātihi ghaniyyan,' 'wa-lā budda min fāriqin,' 'fa-lā budda an yaqūma bi-jamīʿ mā taḥtāju ilayhi.' The root's etymological sense of 'no parting from' (per Ibn Fāris) quietly underwrites the idiom's force: what lā budda asserts is precisely something from which there is no separation, i.e. an inescapable entailment.
Draws on: fass-adam
- Ibn ʿArabī, Fuṣūṣ al-Ḥikam, Faṣṣ Ādam
Reference