Root · 1 in the Quran · 54 in 10 texts of the library
لفظ (root lfz)
اللام والفاء والظاء كلمة صحيحة تدل على طرح الشيء وغالب ذلك أن يكون من الفم تقول لفظ بالكلام يلفظ لفظا ولفظت الشيء من …
Ibn Fāris, Maqāyīs al-lugha
The family of the root
Patterns computed · our dataThe words of ل ف ظ that our sources attest: the root's letters in green, the added letters in gold.
15 words2 verbs2 verbal nouns2 participles1 place or instrument2 intensives and elatives4 other nouns1 plural1 relative or abstract
- لَفْظliterally and virtually
- أَلْفاظplural of literally and virtually
- لَفْظَةutterance; word
- لَفَظَhe ejected it
- تَلَفُّظpronunciation; articulation
The whole family8 groups, by pattern; tap a pattern to see what it does
Verbs2لَفَظَ · تَلَفَّظَ
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.”)
Verbal nouns2لَفْظ · تَلَفُّظ
The action itself, named as a noun (maṣdar).grammar →
- لَفْظliterally and virtuallyLaneForm I · Lane: inf. n.library ×28LaneIbn Fāris
- تَلَفُّظpronunciation; articulationautoForm Vlibrary ×1
Participles2مَلْفُوظ · لَافِظ
The one who does it, and the one it is done to.grammar →
Place, time and instrument1مَلْفَظ
Where or when it happens, and what it is done with: the m- nouns.grammar →
- مَلْفَظnoun of place or timeLane
Intensives, qualities and the elative2لَفِيظ · لَفَظَان
The quality carried far, held as a trait, or compared.grammar →
Other nouns4لَفْظَة · لُفَاظَة · لُفْاظ
Nouns on other patterns; their meaning is learned word by word.grammar →
- لَفْظَةutterance; wordautonounlibrary ×4Lane
- لُفَاظَةwhat is ejected, or cast forth, from the mouthLanenounLane
- لُفْاظwhat is cast, or thrown, awayLanenounLane
- لِفَاظleguminous plants put forth by the earthLanenounLane
Plurals1أَلْفاظ
Broken plurals rebuild the word on a new pattern; sound plurals add an ending.grammar →
- أَلْفاظplural of literally and virtuallyfrom the singularbroken plural of لَفْظlibrary ×14
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
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 · 395اللام والفاء والظاء كلمة صحيحة تدل على طرح الشيء وغالب ذلك أن يكون من الفم تقول لفظ بالكلام يلفظ لفظا ولفظت الشيء من فمي واللافظة الديك ويقال الرحى والبحر وعلى ذلك يفسر قوله — فأما التي سيبها يرتجى … فأجود جودا من اللافظ
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.
ل ف ظ
اللام والفاء والظاء كلمة صحيحة تدل على طرح الشيء وغالب ذلك أن يكون من الفم تقول لفظ بالكلام يلفظ لفظا ولفظت الشيء من فمي واللافظة الديك ويقال الرحى والبحر وعلى ذلك يفسر قوله
L-f-ẓ is a sound word indicating the casting out of something, usually from the mouth; you say 'lafaẓa bi-l-kalāmi yalfiẓu lafẓan' and 'lafaẓtu al-shay'a min famī'; al-lāfiẓa is the rooster, and it is also said of the millstone and the sea; and upon this is interpreted His saying … AI
Ibn Fāris ↗Lisān ↗Lane ↗Quran ×1
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
- لlāmedge of the tongue · voiced, in betweenI. Jinnī
- فfāʾlower lip and upper teeth · voiceless, continuantSīb. · I. Jinnī
- ظẓāʾtongue-tip, edges of the teeth · voiced, continuant, velarisedSīb. · 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
ل
ومن حافة اللسان من أدناها إلى منتهى طرف اللسان، من بينها وبين ما يليها من الحنك الأعلى، مما فويق الضاحك والناب والرباعية والثنية، مخرج اللام
From the edge of the tongue, from its nearest part to the end of its tip, between it and the upper palate next to it, just above the premolar, the canine, the lateral and the central incisor, is the place of the lām. Ibn Jinnī, lines 977–978 ↗
ف
ومن باطن الشفة السفلى وأطراف الثنايا العلى مخرج الفاء
From the inside of the lower lip and the edges of the upper front teeth is the place of the fāʾ. Sībawayh, line 26562 ↗
ومن باطن الشفة السفلى وأطراف الثنايا العلى، مخرج الفاء
From the inside of the lower lip and the edges of the upper front teeth is the place of the fāʾ. Ibn Jinnī, line 985 ↗
ظ
ومما بين طرف اللسان وأطراف الثنايا مخرج الظاء والذال، والثاء
From between the tip of the tongue and the edges of the front teeth is the place of the ẓāʾ, the dhāl and the thāʾ. Sībawayh, line 26561 ↗
ومما بين طرف اللسان وأطراف الثنايا، مخرج الظاء والذال والثاء
From between the tip of the tongue and the edges of the front teeth is the place of the ẓāʾ, the dhāl and the thāʾ. Ibn Jinnī, line 984 ↗
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
ل
Level of existence: السماء الثالثة · the third heaven
Divine Name: القاهر · the Subduer (al-Qāhir)
Lunar mansion: العوا · al-ʿAwwā
Futūḥāt ch. 198, line 64654Spheres of its simples (ch. 2): 7 line 2576 ↗
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 2577ف
Level of existence: الملائكة · the angels
Divine Name: القوى · the Strong (al-Qawī)
Lunar mansion: سعد الأخبية · Saʿd al-Akhbiya
Futūḥāt ch. 198, line 65823Spheres 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 2582ظ
Level of existence: المعادن · the minerals
Divine Name: العزيز · the Mighty (al-ʿAzīz)
Lunar mansion: سعد الذابح · Saʿd al-Dhābiḥ
Futūḥāt ch. 198, line 65491Spheres 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
ل
With fatḥa ـَ
فهي حصول المتكلم على شيء عظيم، وتكون إشارة إلى شيء عظيم.
It is the speaker's attaining of something great, and it serves as an indication of something great.
With ḍamma ـُ
فهي إشارة إلى الشيء الذي لا نهاية له.
It is an indication of the thing that has no end.
With kasra ـِ
فهي إشارة من المتكلم إلى وجود ذاته أو إلى ذاته.
It is an indication by the speaker of the existence of his self, or of his self.
ف
With fatḥa ـَ
فهي لنفي الخبث بعد ما كان جنسه معلوما بالخبث، فهي إشارة إلى أنه طاهر وجنسه خبيث، والخبث مثل المعاصي وما أشبهها.
It is for negating foulness in something whose genus is known for foulness. It thus indicates that the thing is pure while its genus is foul; foulness being like sins and the like.
With ḍamma ـُ
فهي لتزويل الخبث.
It is for removing foulness.
With kasra ـِ
فهي إشارة إلى الذات وما احتوت عليه، وفي بعض الأحيان قد يكون معها التقليل.
It is an indication of the self and what it contains; at times it may carry a sense of diminution.
ظ
With fatḥa ـَ
فهي إشارة إلى الشيء الذي هو عظيم في نفسه ولا يكون معه ضده، كالجود في الشرفاء والغش في اليهود.
It is an indication of the thing that is great in itself and is not accompanied by its opposite, such as generosity in the sharīfs and deceit in the Jews.
With ḍamma ـُ
فهي إشارة إلى الشيء الذي يتبع تحرك نفسه وهي تسعى في هلاكه.
It is an indication of the thing that follows the movement of its own soul while that soul strives for its destruction.
With kasra ـِ
فهي إشارة إلى الشيء الذي يتضرر منه العبد ومن طبعه أنه يضر.
It is an indication of the thing by which the servant is harmed and whose nature is to harm.
Two-letter nucleus8 roots in Ibn Fāris’s chapterل ف
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 29113 ↗
- لفكاللام والفاء والكاف يقولون الألفك الأحمقL29118
- لفماللام والفاء والميم كلمة يقولون اللفام ما بلغ طرف الأنف من اللثام وتلفمت المرأة ردت قناعها على فمهاL29120
- لفااللام والفاء والحرف المعتل أصل صحيح يدل على انكشاف شيء وكشفه ويكون مهموزا وغير مهموزL29123
- لفتاللام والفاء والتاء كلمة واحدة تدل على اللي وصرف الشيء عن جهته المستقيمة منه لفت الشيء لويته ولفت فلانا عن رأيه صرفته والألفت الرجل الأعسر وهو قياس الQ 3 · L29129
- لفجاللام والفاء والجيم كلمة واحدة يقولون الملفج بفتح الفاء الفقير وماضي فعله ألفج وهو من نادر الكلام وأنشد — جارية شبت شبابا عسلجا … في حجر من لم يك عنهاL29135
- لفحاللام والفاء والحاء كلمة واحدةQ 1 · L29140
- لفظاللام والفاء والظاء كلمة صحيحة تدل على طرح الشيء وغالب ذلك أن يكون من الفم تقول لفظ بالكلام يلفظ لفظا ولفظت الشيء من فمي واللافظة الديك ويقال الرحى واQ 1 · L29144
- لفعاللام والفاء والعين أصيل صحيح يدل على اشتمال شيء وتلفعت المرأة بمرطها اشتملت عليه ولفع الشيب رأسه شمله وتلفع الشجر تجلل بالخضرة والتفعت الأرض بالنبات L29150
In the sister scriptsHebrew ל פ צSyriac ܠ ܦ ܛ
| Arabic | ل ف ظ |
| Hebrew | ל פ צ |
| Syriac | ܠ ܦ ܛ |
| Ancient South Arabian (musnad) | 𐩡 𐩰 𐩼 |
| Phoenician | 𐤋 𐤐 𐤑 |
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