Root · 0 in the Quran · 4 in 2 texts of the library
جزمa single sense, al-qaṭʿ — to cut, cut off decisively. (root jzm)
الجيم والزاء والميم أصل واحد وهو القطع
Ibn Fāris, Maqāyīs al-lugha · English rendering AI
The family of the root
Patterns computed · our dataThe words of ج ز م that our sources attest: the root's letters in green, the added letters in gold.
15 words6 verbs3 verbal nouns2 participles1 place or instrument3 other nouns
- جَزَمَhe cut it, or cut it off
- مَجْزُومcut, or cut off
- أَجْزَمَhe sold his palm-trees
- تَجَزَّمَthe staff became split or cracked
- اِنْجَزَمَit became cut, or cut off
The whole family5 groups, by pattern; tap a pattern to see what it does
Verbs6جَزَمَ · جَزَّمَ · أَجْزَمَ
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 (a; the imperfect from the Quranic Arabic Corpus)
Verbal nouns3جَزَمَت · جَزْم · تَجْزِيم
The action itself, named as a noun (maṣdar).grammar →
Participles2مَجْزُوم · جَازِم
The one who does it, and the one it is done to.grammar →
- مَجْزُومcut, or cut offLanepassive, Form Ilibrary ×1Lane
- جَازِمfull water-skin or milk-skinLaneactive, Form ILane
Place, time and instrument1مِجْزَم
Where or when it happens, and what it is done with: the m- nouns.grammar →
- مِجْزَمnoun of instrumentLane
Other nouns3جَزْمَة · جِزْم · جِزْمَة
Nouns on other patterns; their meaning is learned word by word.grammar →
Reference
Why this shape?What each of the 11 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
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-jazm (الجزم) is a type of script, namely the even, regular shaping of the letters;
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 · 393Jazamtu al-shayʾ (جزمت الشيء): I cut it off.
al-Jawharī (d. c. 393/1003), al-Ṣiḥāḥ. Admits only usage he judged sound.
AI AI translation of the Arabic belowIbn Fāris · 395The letters jīm, zāʾ, and mīm form a single root, meaning 'cutting off' (al-qaṭʿ).
Ibn Fāris (d. 395/1004), Maqāyīs al-Lugha. Seeks each root's original sense (aṣl).
AI AI translation of the Arabic belowLisān · 711Al-jazm (الجزم): cutting off.
Ibn Manẓūr (d. 711/1311), Lisān al-ʿArab. The great compendium of the earlier dictionaries (entry shortened).
AI AI translation of the Arabic below
The same letters, turned
The same three letters in all six orders. Choose one.
ج ز م
الجيم والزاء والميم أصل واحد وهو القطع
j-z-m has one root, which is cutting. 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
- جjīmmiddle of the tongue · voiced, stopSīb. · I. Jinnī
- زzāytongue-tip, by the front teeth · voiced, continuantSīb. · I. Jinnī
- مmīmbetween the lips · 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
ج
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 ↗
ز
ومما بين طرف اللسان وفويق الثنايا مخرج الزاي، والسين، والصاد
From between the tip of the tongue and just above the front teeth is the place of the zāy, the sīn and the ṣād. Sībawayh, line 26560 ↗
ومما بين الثنايا وطرف اللسان، مخرج الصاد والزاي والسين
From between the front teeth and the tip of the tongue is the place of the ṣād, the zāy and the sīn. Ibn Jinnī, line 983 ↗
م
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 ↗
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
ج
Level of existence: الفلك الأطلس فلك البروج · the Atlas (starless) sphere, the sphere of the zodiacal signs
Divine Name: الغني · al-Ghanī, the Independent
Lunar mansion: الطرف · al-Ṭarf
Futūḥāt ch. 198, line 62085Spheres 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 2582ز
Level of existence: ما يظهر في ركن الهواء · what appears in the pillar (element) of air
Divine Name: الحي · the Living (al-Ḥayy)
Lunar mansion: الشولة · al-Shawla
Futūḥāt ch. 198, line 64951Spheres of its simples (ch. 2): 7 line 2570 ↗
Nature (ch. 2)
منها دون الألف فطبعها الحرارة واليبوسة
[Zāy and lām] of it, excluding alif: their nature is heat and dryness.
Ibn ʿArabī, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, line 2577م
Level of existence: الإنسان · the human being
Divine Name: الجامع · al-Jāmiʿ, the Gatherer
Lunar mansion: المؤخر · al-Muʾakhkhar
Futūḥāt ch. 198, line 62119Spheres 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
ج
With fatḥa ـَ
فهي نبوة أو ولاية إذا كان قبلها أو بعدها ما يدل على ذلك، وإلا فهي للخير الذي لا يزول أبدا.
It is prophethood or sainthood (walāya) if something before or after it indicates that. Otherwise it is for the good that never ceases.
With ḍamma ـُ
فهي الخير الذي يؤكل أو ينتفع الناس منه.
It is the good that is eaten, or from which people derive benefit.
With kasra ـِ
فهي الخير القليل الذي في الذات من نور الإيمان.
It is the small good within the self from the light of faith.
ز
With fatḥa ـَ
فهي اسم للشيء الذي إذا دخل على الشيء ضره، وقال مرة: اسم للشيء وما يتحرز منه.
It is a name for the thing that harms another thing when it enters upon it. On one occasion he said: a name for the thing and what one guards against.
With ḍamma ـُ
فهي إشارة إلى القبيح الذي فيه ضرر كالكبائر.
It is an indication of the ugly thing that contains harm, such as the major sins.
With kasra ـِ
فهي إشارة إلى القبيح الذي لا ضرر فيه كالصغائر والشبهات والنجاسة.
It is an indication of the ugly thing that contains no harm, such as minor sins, doubtful matters and ritual impurity.
م
With fatḥa ـَ
فهي جميع المكونات.
It is all created beings.
With ḍamma ـُ
فهي العزيز القليل كماء العين، ومنه قيل مومو.
It is the precious, scarce thing, like the water of the eye; from it comes the expression 'mūmū'.
With kasra ـِ
فهي نور الذات ظاهرا كما في العين، وباطنا كما في القلب.
It is the light of the self, outwardly as in the eye and inwardly as in the heart.
Two-letter nucleus5 roots in Ibn Fāris’s chapterج ز
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 5555 ↗
- جزعالجيم والزاء والعين أصلان أحدهما الانقطاع والآخر جوهر من الجواهر فأما الأول فيقولون جزعت الرملة إذا قطعتها ومنه جزع الوادي وهو الموضع الذي يقطعه من أحQ 2 · L5556
- جزلالجيم والزاء واللام أصلان أحدهما عظم الشيء من الأشياء والثاني القطعL5562
- جزمالجيم والزاء والميم أصل واحد وهو القطعL5577
- جزىالجيم والزاء والياء قيام الشيء مقام غيره ومكافأته إياهQ 118 · L5593
- جزحالجيم والزاء والحاء كلمة واحدة لا تتفرع ولا يقاس عليهاL5599
In the sister scriptsHebrew ג ז מSyriac ܓ ܙ ܡ
| Arabic | ج ز م |
| Hebrew | ג ז מ |
| Syriac | ܓ ܙ ܡ |
| Ancient South Arabian (musnad) | 𐩴 𐩸 𐩣 |
| Phoenician | 𐤂 𐤆 𐤌 |
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 already gives the two poles the word keeps: jazm as a style of writing (a letter 'evened,' a pen with no serif) and jazm as filling a waterskin, alongside the grammatical sense of a consonant made sākin.well attested
The lexicographers in chronological order, from al-Khalīl to Lane.
Al-Khalīl already gives the two poles the word keeps: jazm as a style of writing (a letter 'evened,' a pen with no serif) and jazm as filling a waterskin, alongside the grammatical sense of a consonant made sākin. Al-Jawharī (Ṣiḥāḥ) confirms jazamtu al-shayʾ 'I cut it' as the base, extends it to grammatical jazm (sukūn taking the place of iʿrāb), to filling a skin, and to jazza (khazr) reckoning of dates by estimate; he also records jazm al-qawm 'the people gave up, failed.' Ibn Fāris (Maqāyīs) states the root flatly as one sense, al-qaṭʿ, and derives every other use — grammatical jazm because the iʿrāb is 'cut off' from the word, jazma as a portion of sheep, filling a skin because the drawing of water is thereby 'cut off,' and jazma as 'a single bite/meal,' which he says fits the pattern if correct, since it happens once and is then cut off. Ibn Manẓūr (Lisān) adds the decisive oath (yamīn ḥatm jazm) and preserves al-Mubarrad's explanation that grammatical jazm is so named because jazm in ordinary Arabic speech means qaṭʿ, decisive cutting-off.
Draws on: cayn · sihah · Ibn Fāris · lisan
- al-Khalīl, al-ʿAyn
- al-Jawharī, al-Ṣiḥāḥ
- Ibn Fāris, Maqāyīs al-Lugha
- Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān al-ʿArab
Letters & soundIn the akbarī correspondences given, jīm is tied to the starless Atlas sphere and dāl to the human being's fourth letter mīm, itself the human being outright, while zāy is 'what appears in the pillar of air.' Al-Dabbāgh reads jīm as prophecy or sainthood (or, failing context, 'the good that never ceases'), zāy as the name of a thing that harms on entering, or what one guards against, and mīm as all created beings — so a speculative reading would see jazm's decisiveness as a 'guarding cut' (ز) applied to the created thing (م) under a mark of lasting good (ج), i.e., a cutting-off that protects rather than merely severs.speculative
What the theorists of sound symbolism would say of these letters. Speculative by nature.
In the akbarī correspondences given, jīm is tied to the starless Atlas sphere and dāl to the human being's fourth letter mīm, itself the human being outright, while zāy is 'what appears in the pillar of air.' Al-Dabbāgh reads jīm as prophecy or sainthood (or, failing context, 'the good that never ceases'), zāy as the name of a thing that harms on entering, or what one guards against, and mīm as all created beings — so a speculative reading would see jazm's decisiveness as a 'guarding cut' (ز) applied to the created thing (م) under a mark of lasting good (ج), i.e., a cutting-off that protects rather than merely severs. This is offered as suggestive letter-symbolism only; mainstream historical linguistics finds no causal mechanism here and treats such correspondences as exegetical overlay, not etymology.
Draws on: akbari198 · dabbagh
- Ibn ʿArabī / al-Dabbāgh, letter correspondences (as supplied)
Root structureAmong Ibn Fāris's neighboring ج-ز chapters, jazʿ (cutting through a sandy tract, or a kind of gem) and jazl (both 'the largeness of a thing' and 'cutting') sit either side of jazm, so the ج-ز nucleus leans toward severance in more than one sense.uncertain
The two-letter nucleus (Ibn Fāris's own chapters) and the permutations of the letters (Ibn Jinnī).
Among Ibn Fāris's neighboring ج-ز chapters, jazʿ (cutting through a sandy tract, or a kind of gem) and jazl (both 'the largeness of a thing' and 'cutting') sit either side of jazm, so the ج-ز nucleus leans toward severance in more than one sense. Of the permutations, jamz (a manner of running) and zajm (a faint sound) are attested but semantically distant; zamj, glossed by Ibn Fāris as 'not a real thing' except as a bird-name, is explicitly noted by him as a metathesis (maqlūb) of jazm in the sense of 'filling a skin' — a genuine instance of what Ibn Jinnī would call greater derivation. Mazj (mixing) is also attested and productive, and juxtaposing it with jazm (cutting/separating) sets 'to divide' against 'to combine' on the same three radicals — a juxtaposition, not an argument, that the greater-derivation theorists liked to notice.
Draws on: maqayis-nucleus · permutations
- Ibn Fāris, Maqāyīs al-Lugha
- Ibn Jinnī, al-Khaṣāʾiṣ (link not verified)
Semitic kin & loanwordsHebrew gāzam (גזם), used of the locust that 'cuts off/devours completely' (Joel 1:4), shares the root shape g-z-m with Arabic jazama and carries a cognate sense of total, decisive cutting.plausible
Cognates in the sister languages, and whether the word was borrowed.
Hebrew gāzam (גזם), used of the locust that 'cuts off/devours completely' (Joel 1:4), shares the root shape g-z-m with Arabic jazama and carries a cognate sense of total, decisive cutting. Syriac gzm is attested but shifts toward 'to threaten, menace,' a plausible but less direct semantic cousin. No confident Akkadian or Gəʿez cognate is available from standard comparative lexica; the word is not a loanword into Arabic.
Draws on: hebrew
- Brown–Driver–Briggs, s.v. גזם
Philosophy & kalāmIn Arabic logic after Avicenna, jazm (and the adjective jazmī) names a decisive, certain assent (al-tasdīq al-jazm), contrasted with mere supposition (ẓann) or hesitant assent;plausible
The word as a technical term in falsafa and theology.
In Arabic logic after Avicenna, jazm (and the adjective jazmī) names a decisive, certain assent (al-tasdīq al-jazm), contrasted with mere supposition (ẓann) or hesitant assent; a qaḍiyya jazmiyya is a categorical (non-conditional) proposition, again opposed to the conditional (sharṭiyya). The term thus imports the root's core sense of 'cutting off' doubt or alternative branches, giving logical certainty the same decisive, non-reversible character that al-Jawharī and Ibn Fāris describe for the decisive oath and the cut-off consonant.
Draws on: mantiq
- Avicenna, al-Ishārāt wa-l-Tanbīhāt, Logic
Reference