Root · 120 in the Quran · 179 in 23 texts of the library
يديno Ibn Fāris excerpt is given for this root; per al-Khalīl and Ibn Manẓūr the core sense … (root ydy)
English rendering AI
The family of the root
Patterns computed · our dataThe words of ي د ي that our sources attest: the root's letters in green, the added letters in gold.
3 words3 verbs
- أَدَّىdirect; guide
- وَدَىpay blood money
- أَوْدَىput and end to; destroy
The whole family1 group, by pattern; tap a pattern to see what it does
Verbs3وَدَى · أَدَّى · أَوْدَى
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)
- وَدَىpay blood moneyautoForm Ilibrary ×1
- أَدَّىdirect; guideautoForm IIlibrary ×8
- أَوْدَىput and end to; destroyautoForm IVlibrary ×1
Reference
Why this shape?What each of the 3 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-yad (اليد) 'the hand' is well known.
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 · 393Al-yad (اليد) originally was yaday (يدي) on the pattern fa'l with a quiescent middle radical, because its plural is aydin (أيد) and yadin (يدى).
al-Jawharī (d. c. 393/1003), al-Ṣiḥāḥ. Admits only usage he judged sound.
AI AI translation of the Arabic belowLisān · 711Al-yad (اليد): the kaff (الكف) 'palm/hand'.
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 their orders. Choose one.
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
- يyāʾmiddle of the tongue · voiced, in betweenSīb. · I. Jinnī
- دdāltongue-tip, roots of the teeth · voiced, stopSīb. · 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
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 ↗
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 ↗
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
ي
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 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 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
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.
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.
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 י ד יSyriac ܝ ܕ ܝ
| Arabic | ي د ي |
| Hebrew | י ד י |
| Syriac | ܝ ܕ ܝ |
| Ancient South Arabian (musnad) | 𐩺 𐩵 𐩺 |
| Phoenician | 𐤉 𐤃 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) treats al-yad as well-known and immediately extends it idiomatically: yad al-niʿma is 'the complete, overflowing' favor, yad al-faʾs is the axe's handle, yad al-qaws its curved tip, yad al-dahr the 'reach' of time, and yad al-rīḥ the wind's dominion — poetry is cited for the wind holding the reins 'in the hand of the north wind.' al-Jawharī (al-Ṣiḥāḥ) is chiefly grammatical: he explains that yad is historically a defective noun on the pattern faʿl, originally yady, its final yāʾ elided for lightness though it resurfaces in the dual (yadayn/yadāni), the plural aydin/aydī, and even a further plural-of-plural ayādin/ayādī used by the poets — evidence that the missing third radical y is real, not merely posited.well attested
The lexicographers in chronological order, from al-Khalīl to Lane.
al-Khalīl (al-ʿAyn) treats al-yad as well-known and immediately extends it idiomatically: yad al-niʿma is 'the complete, overflowing' favor, yad al-faʾs is the axe's handle, yad al-qaws its curved tip, yad al-dahr the 'reach' of time, and yad al-rīḥ the wind's dominion — poetry is cited for the wind holding the reins 'in the hand of the north wind.' al-Jawharī (al-Ṣiḥāḥ) is chiefly grammatical: he explains that yad is historically a defective noun on the pattern faʿl, originally yady, its final yāʾ elided for lightness though it resurfaces in the dual (yadayn/yadāni), the plural aydin/aydī, and even a further plural-of-plural ayādin/ayādī used by the poets — evidence that the missing third radical y is real, not merely posited. Ibn Manẓūr (Lisān) confirms this account nearly verbatim via al-Jawharī and Abū Isḥāq, glossing yad narrowly as 'the palm' (al-kaff), extending it from fingertip to wrist, and again foregrounding the -y- radical revealed only in the extended forms.
Draws on: al-ʿAyn · al-Ṣiḥāḥ · Lisān al-ʿArab
- al-Khalīl, al-ʿAyn, ي-د-ي
- al-Jawharī, al-Ṣiḥāḥ, ي-د-ي
- Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān al-ʿArab, ي-د-ي
Letters & soundThe Akbarian table assigns ي (yāʾ) to the First Heaven and د (dāl) to the lowest heaven, the nearer, outward-facing sky;speculative
What the theorists of sound symbolism would say of these letters. Speculative by nature.
The Akbarian table assigns ي (yāʾ) to the First Heaven and د (dāl) to the lowest heaven, the nearer, outward-facing sky; al-Dabbāgh reads yāʾ as marking the vocative or emphasis, and dāl as indicating something external to the self. Fancifully, one could hear in yad an outward-reaching (د, the external) organ called forth or emphasized (ي) — apt for the hand as the body's instrument of address to the outside world — but this is a resonance drawn from a specific mystical letter-system, not a linguistic derivation, and mainstream philology gives it no evidentiary weight.
Draws on: Akbarian letter-table · al-Dabbāgh, Fatḥ al-Raḥmān letter meanings
- Ibn ʿArabī, letters-in-the-Breath table, entry ي/د
- al-Dabbāgh, Fatḥ al-Raḥmān
Root structureNo Ibn Fāris chapter-siblings are supplied for this root, so no genuine ص-ح-style nucleus comparison can be made here.plausible
The two-letter nucleus (Ibn Fāris's own chapters) and the permutations of the letters (Ibn Jinnī).
No Ibn Fāris chapter-siblings are supplied for this root, so no genuine ص-ح-style nucleus comparison can be made here. What the permutation data does show is telling on its own: of the three orderings of the radicals, only ي-د-ي is attested (120 occurrences), while ي-ي-د and د-ي-ي are unused — the root is a fixed defective (nāqiṣ) noun whose apparent 'two-letter' surface (yad) is, as the lexicographers show, actually triliteral, the final weak radical simply eliding in the unmarked singular and reappearing in every derived and inflected form (yadayn, aydin, ayādī).
Draws on: permutations table · weak-root morphology
Semitic kin & loanwordsYad is core inherited Semitic vocabulary, not a loan: Hebrew יָד yad 'hand,' Aramaic/Syriac ܝܕ yad(ā), Akkadian idu(m) 'hand, side, share,' Gəʿez ǝd, and Old/Epigraphic South Arabian yd all continue the same Proto-Semitic *yad-.well attested
Cognates in the sister languages, and whether the word was borrowed.
Yad is core inherited Semitic vocabulary, not a loan: Hebrew יָד yad 'hand,' Aramaic/Syriac ܝܕ yad(ā), Akkadian idu(m) 'hand, side, share,' Gəʿez ǝd, and Old/Epigraphic South Arabian yd all continue the same Proto-Semitic *yad-. The Arabic defective-noun behavior (yadan, dual yadayn, plural aydin) matches the reconstructed final-weak or biconsonantal-plus-glide shape reflected across the family, confirming the classical grammarians' account of an elided third radical rather than a genuine biradical root.
Draws on: comparative Semitic lexicography
- Brown–Driver–Briggs, יָד
- Leslau, Comparative Dictionary of Geʿez, ǝd
Quranic exegesisThe exegetes read yad along a spectrum from literal to purely idiomatic.well attested
How the classical exegetes read the word in the Quran.
The exegetes read yad along a spectrum from literal to purely idiomatic. At 2:79 ('what their hands have written,' bimā katabat aydīhim) the hand is read as the literal instrument of the scribes falsifying scripture, though also as a standard idiom of self-ascribed agency (kasabat aydīhim, 'what their own hands have earned'), stressing that the wrongdoing is their own doing, not fate's. At 2:66 ('a deterrent for what was between its hands and what came after,' bayna yadayhā), Ṭabarī and Zamakhsharī take bayna yaday- as a fossilized spatial/temporal idiom for 'before/preceding,' with no bodily reference intended. A separate and much-discussed case is the anthropomorphic yad Allāh and the dual khalaqtu bi-yadayya (Q38:75, cited within the Fuṣūṣ material): al-Rāzī surveys competing readings — the literalist affirmation of a real divine 'hand' without asking how (bi-lā kayf), and the metaphorical reading of yad as qudra (power) or niʿma (favor/bounty), a reading al-Rāghib also favors when he glosses yad as extending by metonymy to power, possession, and beneficence.
Draws on: al-Ṭabarī · al-Zamakhsharī · al-Rāzī · al-Rāghib
Philosophy & kalāmYad Allāh belongs to the kalām category of ṣifāt khabariyya, the scripturally-reported divine attributes (hand, face, eye, sitting) that became a central battleground between schools.plausible
The word as a technical term in falsafa and theology.
Yad Allāh belongs to the kalām category of ṣifāt khabariyya, the scripturally-reported divine attributes (hand, face, eye, sitting) that became a central battleground between schools. Ashʿarīs typically affirm the term as revealed while refusing to specify its modality (bi-lā kayf, without asking 'how'); Muʿtazilīs and some rationalist exegetes read it metaphorically as power or bounty to avoid corporealizing God; Ḥanbalī-Atharī literalists affirm the term with minimal gloss, resisting both figuration and inquiry into modality. al-Rāzī's Tafsīr is a standard place where these positions are laid out against one another.
Draws on: kalām, ṣifāt khabariyya debate
Akbarian readingIbn ʿArabī reads God's 'two hands' in khalaqtu bi-yadayya (Q38:75) as figures for two divine attributes jointly directed toward the creation of the Perfect Human — he glosses these explicitly as 'the two hands of the Real' (yadā l-Ḥaqq), namely the form of the cosmos (ṣūrat al-ʿālam) and the form of the Real (ṣūrat al-Ḥaqq) combined uniquely in Adam.well attested
The word in Ibn ʿArabī's text and terminology.
Ibn ʿArabī reads God's 'two hands' in khalaqtu bi-yadayya (Q38:75) as figures for two divine attributes jointly directed toward the creation of the Perfect Human — he glosses these explicitly as 'the two hands of the Real' (yadā l-Ḥaqq), namely the form of the cosmos (ṣūrat al-ʿālam) and the form of the Real (ṣūrat al-Ḥaqq) combined uniquely in Adam. God's gathering both together for Adam, he says, is purely an honoring (tashrīf); Iblīs, by contrast, is only a part of the cosmos and never possessed this jamʿiyya (combining-together), which is why Adam alone, not Iblīs, bears the rank of khalīfa.
Draws on: Faṣṣ Ādam excerpts
- Ibn ʿArabī, Fuṣūṣ al-Ḥikam, Faṣṣ Ādam
- Quran 38:75 ↗
Reference