Root · 42 in the Quran · 31 in 11 texts of the library
سخر (root skhr)
السين والخاء والراء أصل مطرد مستقيم يدل على احتقار واستذلال
Ibn Fāris, Maqāyīs al-lugha
The family of the root
Patterns computed · our dataThe words of س خ ر that our sources attest: the root's letters in green, the added letters in gold.
21 words4 verbs4 verbal nouns2 participles1 place or instrument4 other nouns4 plurals2 relatives and abstracts
- سَخَّرَhe constrained him, or compelled him, namely, a servant, or a beast, to do …
- سَخِرَhe mocked at, scoffed at, laughed at, derided, or ridiculed, him
- تَسْخِيرexploitation
- مُسَخِّرoppressor
- مُسَخَّرَات—
The whole family7 groups, by pattern; tap a pattern to see what it does
Verbs4سَخِرَ · سَخَّرَ · اِسْتَسْخَرَ
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: فَعِلَ يَفْعَلُ (i – a; the imperfect from Lane's “aor.”)
- سَخِرَhe mocked at, scoffed at, laughed at, derided, or ridiculed, himLaneForm IQurʾān ×11library ×2LaneIbn Fāris
- سَخَّرَhe constrained him, or compelled him, namely, a servant, or a beast, to do …LaneForm IIQurʾān ×22library ×7LaneIbn Fāris
- اِسْتَسْخَرَLane: see Form IForm XQurʾān ×1Lane
- تَسَخَّرَLane: see Form IIForm VLane
Verbal nouns4تَسْخِير · سَخَر · سُخْرِيّ
The action itself, named as a noun (maṣdar).grammar →
Participles2مُسَخِّر · مُسَخَّر
The one who does it, and the one it is done to.grammar →
- مُسَخِّرoppressorautoactive, Form IVlibrary ×6
- مُسَخَّرany one that is constrained, or compelled, brought into subjection, or made …Lanepassive, Form IIQurʾān ×1Lane
Place, time and instrument1مَسْخَرَة
Where or when it happens, and what it is done with: the m- nouns.grammar →
- مَسْخَرَةoccasion, or a cause, of mockery, scoffing, derision, or ridiculeLanenoun of place (with -a)Lane
Other nouns4سَوَاخِر · سُخَرَة · سُخَّر
Nouns on other patterns; their meaning is learned word by word.grammar →
- سَوَاخِرships obeying, and having a good windLanenounLaneIbn Fāris
- سُخَرَةone who mocks at, scoffs at, laughs at, derides, or ridicules, others, muchLanenounLaneIbn Fāris
- سُخَّرcertain herb, or leguminous plant, in KhurásánLanenounLaneIbn Fāris
- سُخْرَةone who is mocked at, scoffed at, laughed at, derided, or ridiculedLanenounLaneIbn Fāris
Plurals4مُسَخَّرَات · سَاخِرِين · مُسَخِّرُون
Broken plurals rebuild the word on a new pattern; sound plurals add an ending.grammar →
- مُسَخَّرَاتsound plural of مُسَخَّرَةQurʾān ×3
- سَاخِرِينsound plural of سَاخِرQurʾān ×1
- مُسَخِّرُونplural of oppressorfrom the singularsound plural of مُسَخِّرlibrary ×2
- مَسَاخِرbroken plural of مَسْخَرَةLane
Reference
Why this shape?What each of the 13 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.
- Attested: مَسْخَرَة, noun of place (with -a), “occasion, or a cause, of mockery, scoffing, derision, or ridicule” (Lane)
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
Ibn Fāris · 395السين والخاء والراء أصل مطرد مستقيم يدل على احتقار واستذلال من ذلك قولنا سخر الله عز وجل الشيء وذلك إذا ذلله لامره وإرادته قال الله جل ثناؤه ﴿ وسخر لكم ما في السماوات وما في الأرض ﴾ ويقال رجل سخره يسخر في العمل وسخرة أيض
Ibn Fāris (d. 395/1004), Maqāyīs al-Lugha. Seeks each root's original sense (aṣl).
The same letters, turned
The same three letters in all six orders. Choose one.
س خ ر
السين والخاء والراء أصل مطرد مستقيم يدل على احتقار واستذلال
s-kh-r: a regular, straightforward root indicating contempt and humiliation. 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
- سsīntongue-tip, by the front teeth · voiceless, continuantSīb. · I. Jinnī
- خkhāʾtop of the throat · voiceless, continuantSīb. · I. Jinnī
- رrāʾtip of the tongue, near the nūn · 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
س
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 ↗
خ
وأدناها مخرجا من الفم: الغين والخاء
The nearest of them to the mouth in place: the ghayn and the khāʾ. Sībawayh, line 26549 ↗
ومما فوق ذلك مع أول الفم، مخرج الغين والخاء
From above that, at the start of the mouth, is the place of the ghayn and the khāʾ. Ibn Jinnī, line 971 ↗
ر
ومن مخرج النون غير أنه أدخل في ظهر اللسان قليلا لانحرافه إلى اللام مخرج الراء
From the place of the nūn, except that it goes a little further onto the back of the tongue, because it leans towards the lām, is the place of the rāʾ. Sībawayh, lines 26557–26558 ↗
ومن مخرج النون غير أنه أدخل في ظهر اللسان قليلا، لانحرافه إلى اللام، مخرج الراء
From the place of the nūn, except that it goes a little further onto the back of the tongue, because it leans towards the lām, is the place of the rāʾ. Ibn Jinnī, lines 980–981 ↗
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
س
Level of existence: ما ظهر في الماء · what appears in water
Divine Name: المحيي · al-Muḥyī, the Life-Giver
Lunar mansion: النعائم · al-Naʿāʾim
Futūḥāt ch. 198, line 62110Spheres of its simples (ch. 2): 9 line 2572 ↗
Nature (ch. 2)
السين والشين فطبعهما الحرارة واليبوسة
Sīn and shīn: their nature is heat and dryness.
Ibn ʿArabī, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, line 2581خ
Spheres of its simples (ch. 2): 10 line 2573 ↗
ر
Level of existence: السماء الخامسة · the fifth heaven
Divine Name: المصور · the Form-Giver (al-Muṣawwir)
Lunar mansion: الغفر · al-Ghafr
Futūḥāt ch. 198, line 64675Spheres 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
س
With fatḥa ـَ
فهي إشارة إلى الشيء المليح الذي من طبعه الرقة.
It is an indication of the comely thing whose nature is delicacy.
With ḍamma ـُ
فهي إشارة إلى الشيء القبيح الخشن، أو إشارة إلى سواد حسا ومعنى.
It is an indication of the ugly, rough thing, or of blackness, sensible and figurative.
With kasra ـِ
وبالكسر إشارة إلى الشيء الطابع وتكون الإشارة منه.
With kasra it is an indication of the impressing/stamping thing, and the indication proceeds from it.
خ
With fatḥa ـَ
فهي طول إلى النهاية مع رقة.
It is length to the utmost, together with fineness/thinness.
With ḍamma ـُ
فهي اسم لكمال في الحيوانات.
It is a name for a perfection in animals.
With kasra ـِ
فهي اسم لكمال في الجمادات.
It is a name for a perfection in inanimate things.
ر
With fatḥa ـَ
فهي إشارة إلى جميع الخيرات الظاهرة والباطنة.
It is an indication of all goods, outward and inward.
With ḍamma ـُ
فهي إشارة إلى الواحد في نفسه وهو ظاهر.
It is an indication of the one in itself, and it is manifest.
With kasra ـِ
فهي إشارة إلى الشيء الذي فيه الروح وليس من بني آدم، أو إشارة إلى الروح نفسها.
It is an indication of a thing that has spirit in it but is not of the children of Adam, or an indication of the spirit itself.
Two-letter nucleus9 roots in Ibn Fāris’s chapterس خ
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 14668 ↗
- سخدالسين والخاء والدال أصل فيه السخد وهو الماء الذي يخرج مع الولد ولذلكL14669
- سخرالسين والخاء والراء أصل مطرد مستقيم يدل على احتقار واستذلالQ 42 · L14674
- سخفالسين والخاء والفاء أصل مطرد يدل على خفةL14681
- سخلالسين والخاء واللام أصل مطرد صحيح ينقاس يدل على حقارة وضعفL14684
- سخمالسين والخاء والميم أصل مطرد مستقيم يدل على اللين والسوادL14691
- سخنالسين والخاء والنون أصل صحيح مطرد منقاس يدل على حرارة في الشيءL14699
- سخىالسين والخاء والحرف المعتل أصل واحد يدل على اتساع في شيء وانفراج الأصل فيه قولهم سخيت القدر وسخوتها إذا جعلت للنار تحتها مذهبا ومن الباب سخاوى الأرضL14707
- سخبالسين والخاء والباء كلمة لا يقاس عليها يقولون السخاب قلادة من قرنفل أو غيره وليس فيها من الجواهر شيء والجمع سخبL14714
- سختالسين والخاء والتاء ليس أصلا وما أحسب الكلام الذي فيه من محض اللغة يقولون للشيء الصلب سخت وسختيت ثم يقولون أمر مسخات إذا ضعف وذهب وهذان مختلفان ولذلك L14716
In the sister scriptsHebrew ס/ש ח רSyriac ܣ/ܫ ܚ ܪ
| Arabic | س خ ر |
| Hebrew | ס/ש ח ר |
| Syriac | ܣ/ܫ ܚ ܪ |
| Ancient South Arabian (musnad) | 𐩯/𐩦 𐩭 𐩧 |
| Phoenician | 𐤎/𐤔 𐤇 𐤓 |
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.
Reference