Root · 2 in the Quran · 3 in 3 texts of the library
حويa single root-sense, al-jamʿ — to gather, draw together, coil, and hold within one's … (root hwy)
الحاء والواو وما بعده معتل أصل واحد وهو الجمع
Ibn Fāris, Maqāyīs al-lugha · English rendering AI
The family of the root
Patterns computed · our dataThe words of ح و ي that our sources attest: the root's letters in green, the added letters in gold.
19 words5 verbs5 participles3 intensives and elatives5 other nouns1 plural
- حاوِيmagician; juggler
- أَحْوَى—
- حَوَايَا—
- تحوّىit assumed a round, or circular, form
- حَوَّاءman who collects serpents
The whole family5 groups, by pattern; tap a pattern to see what it does
Verbs5حَوَا · تَحْوِيَةَ · تحوّى
The root as an action: the bare Form I, and the Forms made by adding letters before, inside or after the root.grammar →
Participles5حاوِي · حَاوِيّ · محتوى
The one who does it, and the one it is done to.grammar →
- حاوِيmagician; jugglerautoactive, Form Ilibrary ×3
- حَاوِيّactive, Form ILane
- محتوىpassive, Form VIIILane
- مَحْوِيّpassive, Form ILane
- مُحَوَّىpassive, Form IILane
Intensives, qualities and the elative3أَحْوَى · حَوَّاء · أَحْوِيّ
The quality carried far, held as a trait, or compared.grammar →
Other nouns5حَوَايَا · حَاوِيَاء · حِوَاء
Nouns on other patterns; their meaning is learned word by word.grammar →
Reference
Why this shape?What each of the 12 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 · 170Ḥawā (حوى) so-and-so māl (property), ḥayyan (حيا) and ḥiwāyatan (حواية), means: he gathered it and secured it;
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 · 395Ḥāʾ, wāw, and the weak letter following it form a single root, meaning 'gathering' (al-jamʿ).
Ibn Fāris (d. 395/1004), Maqāyīs al-Lugha. Seeks each root's original sense (aṣl).
AI AI translation of the Arabic belowal-Rāghib · 502Al-ḥayāh (الحياة, 'life') is used in [several] senses: The first: for the growing power (al-quwwah al-nāmiyah) found in plants and animals, from which it is said 'a living plant' (nabāt ḥayy).
al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī (d. c. 502/1108), al-Mufradāt. Quranic vocabulary, from core sense to Quranic usage.
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.
ح و ي
الحاء والواو وما بعده معتل أصل واحد وهو الجمع
ḥ-w and what follows it is weak: one root, which is gathering. AI
Ibn Fāris ↗Lane ↗Quran ×2
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
- حḥāʾmiddle of the throat · voiceless, continuantSīb. · I. Jinnī
- وwāwbetween the lips · voiced, in betweenSīb. · 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
ح
ومن أوسط الحلق مخرج العين والحاء
From the middle of the throat is the place of the ʿayn and the ḥāʾ. Sībawayh, lines 26548–26549 ↗
ومن وسط الحلق مخرج العين والحاء
From the middle of the throat is the place of the ʿayn and the ḥāʾ. Ibn Jinnī, line 970 ↗
و
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 ↗
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
ح
Level of existence: الجوهر الهبابي · the dust-like substance (spelled الهبابي in the text)
Divine Name: الآخر · al-Ākhir, the Last
Lunar mansion: الدبران · al-Dabarān
Futūḥāt ch. 198, line 62076Spheres of its simples (ch. 2): 10 line 2573 ↗
و
Level of existence: تعيين الرتب والمقامات والمنازل · the determination of ranks, stations and waystations
Divine Name: رفيع الدرجات · Rafīʿ al-Darajāt, Exalted in Degrees
Lunar mansion: الرشا · al-Rashāʾ
Futūḥāt ch. 198, line 62121Spheres 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
ح
With fatḥa ـَ
فهي تدل على الإحاطة والشمول للجميع.
It denotes encompassing and inclusion of everything.
With ḍamma ـُ
فهي العدد الكثير الخارج عن بني آدم كالنجوم.
It is a great number external to the children of Adam, such as the stars.
With kasra ـِ
فهي العدد الداخل في الذات أو للذات عليه ولاية كملكية العبيد والدنانير والدراهم وغير ذلك.
It is a number contained within the self, or over which the self has authority, such as ownership of slaves, dinars, dirhams and the like.
و
With fatḥa ـَ
فهي الأشياء المشتبكة في الإنسان مثل العروق والأصابع وما أشبه ذلك.
It is the intertwined things in the human being, such as veins, fingers and the like.
With ḍamma ـُ
فهي الأشياء المباينة لبني آدم مثل الأفلاك والجبال وما أشبه ذلك
It is things distinct from the children of Adam, such as the celestial spheres, mountains and the like.
With kasra ـِ
فهي الأشياء المشتبكة المستقذرة أو المبغوضة كالأمعاء ونحوها.
It is intertwined things that are filthy or detested, such as the intestines and the like.
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.
In the sister scriptsHebrew ח ו יSyriac ܚ ܘ ܝ
| Arabic | ح و ي |
| Hebrew | ח ו י |
| Syriac | ܚ ܘ ܝ |
| Ancient South Arabian (musnad) | 𐩢 𐩥 𐩺 |
| Phoenician | 𐤇 𐤅 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 (al-ʿAyn) glosses ḥawā mālan as jamaʿahu wa-aḥrazahu, 'he gathered and secured it,' with iḥtawā ʿalayhi as full possession, and gives the coiling of the snake (ḥayy al-ḥayyah) and the rounded arc of certain stars as instances of al-ḥawiyy, 'the encircling of a thing';well attested
The lexicographers in chronological order, from al-Khalīl to Lane.
Al-Khalīl (al-ʿAyn) glosses ḥawā mālan as jamaʿahu wa-aḥrazahu, 'he gathered and secured it,' with iḥtawā ʿalayhi as full possession, and gives the coiling of the snake (ḥayy al-ḥayyah) and the rounded arc of certain stars as instances of al-ḥawiyy, 'the encircling of a thing'; he also lists al-ḥawāyā as the intestines, citing ʿAlī's verse on a big-bellied foe (al-ʿayn al-ʿaẓīm al-ḥāwiyah). Ibn Fāris (Maqāyīs) reduces the root to one sense, al-jamʿ 'gathering,' from which he derives ḥawiyyah/ḥāwiyāʾ (intestines, coiled together), ḥawiyyah (a cloth wrapped round a camel's hump for riding), and even ḥayy (a settled tribe) and ḥiwāʾ (a single dwelling) as gathered units. The al-Rāghib excerpt supplied here in fact belongs to the neighboring life-sense cluster (ḥayāh as growth-force in plant and animal, and as sentient life) rather than to ḥawā's gathering sense directly, which suggests the two hollow roots ḥ-w-y and ḥ-y-y were sometimes treated as adjacent entries rather than that al-Rāghib glosses ḥawā here. Lane confirms and sharpens the core sense: ḥawāhu, 'he collected it, drew it, or gathered it together... he grasped it, got, or gained possession of it,' with iḥtawā ʿalayhi as taking full hold.
Draws on: al-ʿAyn · Maqāyīs al-Lughah · al-Mufradāt · Lane's Lexicon
- al-Khalīl, al-ʿAyn
- Ibn Fāris, Maqāyīs al-Lughah
- al-Rāghib, al-Mufradāt
- Lane, Arabic-English Lexicon
Letters & soundIn the letters-in-the-Breath scheme attributed to Ibn ʿArabī, ḥāʾ corresponds to the dust-like substance (al-jawhar al-habāʾī), wāw to the fixing of ranks, stations, and waystations, and yāʾ to the First Heaven.speculative
What the theorists of sound symbolism would say of these letters. Speculative by nature.
In the letters-in-the-Breath scheme attributed to Ibn ʿArabī, ḥāʾ corresponds to the dust-like substance (al-jawhar al-habāʾī), wāw to the fixing of ranks, stations, and waystations, and yāʾ to the First Heaven. Al-Dabbāgh reads ḥāʾ (fatḥah) as encompassing and inclusion of everything — a striking fit with ḥawā's sense of gathering-in — wāw as the intertwined things within the human being (veins, fingers), and yāʾ as the vocative or emphatic particle. The convergence of ḥāʾ's 'inclusion of everything' with al-jamʿ, the lexicographers' core sense of this root, is suggestive, but this whole mode of analysis is not part of mainstream historical linguistics and should be treated as symbolic commentary, not etymology.
Draws on: Ibn ʿArabī, Breath-letters (Akbarī 198) · al-Dabbāgh, letter-meanings
- Ibn ʿArabī, letters in the Breath (Akbarī 198)
- al-Dabbāgh, letter meanings
Root structureNo two-letter nucleus chapter is given for ḥ-w here, so the comparison rests on the six permutations of the root letters.uncertain
The two-letter nucleus (Ibn Fāris's own chapters) and the permutations of the letters (Ibn Jinnī).
No two-letter nucleus chapter is given for ḥ-w here, so the comparison rests on the six permutations of the root letters. ḥwy itself (attested) yields al-jamʿ, gathering; wḥy (attested) yields 'casting knowledge into another, secretly'; ywḥ (attested) is a name of the sun; wyḥ (attested) is the interjection of pity, 'woe'; ḥyw and yḥw are unattested or irregular. Juxtaposed, not asserted as etymology, one might notice a shared image of something round or enclosed conveyed or cast — the coiled snake and rounded star-cluster of ḥawā, the sun's disc in yūḥ, the 'casting' of a hidden content in waḥy — but Ibn Fāris himself keeps these as separate roots, and any greater-derivation link across them remains speculative rather than demonstrated.
Draws on: Maqāyīs permutation table · Ibn Jinnī, al-Khaṣāʾiṣ
Semitic kin & loanwordsNo confident Semitic cognate has been identified for ḥawā in its sense of 'gather, coil, contain.' Hebrew ḥāwāh and Aramaic ḥwā ('to show, declare, tell') share the same three radicals but belong to a distinct semantic cluster (disclosure, not gathering), and the resemblance in form does not by itself establish a shared origin.uncertain
Cognates in the sister languages, and whether the word was borrowed.
No confident Semitic cognate has been identified for ḥawā in its sense of 'gather, coil, contain.' Hebrew ḥāwāh and Aramaic ḥwā ('to show, declare, tell') share the same three radicals but belong to a distinct semantic cluster (disclosure, not gathering), and the resemblance in form does not by itself establish a shared origin. The root is not a plausible loanword; it belongs to the native Arabic stock of hollow (حو/حي) roots whose senses diverge across the Semitic family.
Draws on: comparative Semitic survey
Quranic exegesisḤawāyā occurs at Q6:146, in the account of what was forbidden to the Jews: the fat of cattle and sheep, except what clings to their backs, entrails, or bone — mā ḥamalat ẓuhūruhumā aw al-ḥawāyā aw mā khtalaṭa bi-ʿaẓm.plausible
How the classical exegetes read the word in the Quran.
Ḥawāyā occurs at Q6:146, in the account of what was forbidden to the Jews: the fat of cattle and sheep, except what clings to their backs, entrails, or bone — mā ḥamalat ẓuhūruhumā aw al-ḥawāyā aw mā khtalaṭa bi-ʿaẓm. Al-Ṭabarī and al-Zamakhsharī gloss al-ḥawāyā simply as al-amʿāʾ, the intestines, matching al-Khalīl and Ibn Fāris exactly, and discuss the variant grammatical forms of the word (ḥawāyā/ḥāwiyah) as a matter of dialect rather than meaning. Aḥwā occurs at Q87:5, 'fa-jaʿalahu ghuthāʾan aḥwā,' describing pasture that God brings forth green and then turns to blackish, dried-up stubble; exegetes read aḥwā as dark green shading into black, and treat the verse as an image of God's power over the life-cycle of vegetation, growth followed by withering.
Reference