Form I Active Participles of Hollow Roots

فَراغ

root: ف-ر-غ / noun / definition: void, emptiness

I’m wrapping up my last week in London for the next few months on the emptiness of fallen-through plans and the urge to claw out a silent space to curl up in and calm my mind.

In the corner of my field of vision, I see my airport clothes laid out on the chair, and I wonder now if it was too soon to pack my pillowcases. (Probably.)

But you know what else is empty? Hollow roots.

Okay, they’re not really empty, but they do have a shapeshifting و or ي as their middle letter that sometimes appears to disappear.

And something interesting happens to this middle root letter when it comes to the form I active participle (اسم الفاعل) of hollow roots.

We know that the typical pattern of the اسم فاعل of form I verbs is فاعِل—with ف and ع and ل representing the root letters.

But when the middle letter of the root is either و or ي, we find that the ع it’s represented by transforms into a hamza (ء), forming this pattern: فائِل.

(Note that the hamza is sitting on an alif maqsoora in فائِل due to its phonological position—check out Seats of the Hamza (ء) for more…)

Let’s take a look at some examples:

كائِن

root: ك-و-ن

meaning: (a) being

غائِب

root: غ-ي-ب

meaning: absent

فائِز

root: ف-و-ز

meaning: successful, winner

قائِد

root: ق-و-د

meaning: leader

رائِد

root: ر-و-د

meaning: pioneer

سائِق

root: س-ي-ق

meaning: driver

تائِه

root: ت-ي-ه

meaning: wandering, lost

(Note: in dialects, though, you sometimes hear the ء in these active participles pronounced as ي!)

For more about active participles from different root types, take a look at these:

Active Participles of Defective Roots
Form I Active Participles of Geminate Roots
Quadriliteral Active Participles in Arabic (and why not try out the quadriliterals quiz while you’re on the topic?)

…or switch it up and delve into passive participles instead with Fixed-Form Passive Participles with Prepositions—it’s a really useful one if you want to level-up your language!

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