Seventeen Arabic Words for Peace

سَبْعة

root: س-ب-ع / noun / definition: seven

Only seven days to go, I remind myself, willing away the days but craving more hours. I’m restless with the wait, yet overwhelmed by all I need to get done before next Tuesday.

Despite the dull pangs of stress in my head, my heart is at peace with everything. And I realise I’ve been using that word—peace—a lot in my conversations.

Just as art imitates life, this blog mirrors my thoughts. So today I decided to write a synonyms post, looking at some words in Arabic that mean “peace”.

I’ve grouped together nouns in this list by their roots:

سَلام • سِلْم • سَلْم

root: س-ل-م

سلام is probably the word that first comes to mind when we think about peace.

سِلم and سَلم carry the same meaning, with سِلم being both masculine and feminine in terms of grammatical gender. سِلم is also another way to refer to Islam (إسلام, from the same root).

أَمان

root: ء-م-ن

You’ve heard this word in the phrase في أمان الله (“goodbye”, “take care”), where أمان denotes safety and protection, in addition to peace.

The commonly-used Turkish exclamation aman! derives from this Arabic noun.

طَمان

root: ط-م-ن

And here we have أمان’s word twin, طَمان. For more about pairs of words like this, see Arabic Observations: Word Twins.

طَمَأنينة • اِطْمِئْنان

root: ط-م-ء-ن

Did you know that the root of these two words, ط-م-ء-ن, is a compound root? And that it’s actually linked to طَمان and possibly أَمان too?

Read about it (and similar roots) in Arabic Observations: Compound Quadriliteral Arabic Verbs!

رَهْو

root: ر-ه-و

This noun, رَهْو, occurs once in the Qur’an, in the context of the stillness of the sea that Moses miraculously parted.

The form I verb from this root, رَها / يَرهو, means “to amble”.

سُكون • سَكينة

root: س-ك-ن

Both سكون and سكينة relate to stillness, silence, and tranquility.

سَكينة specifically denotes a sense of peace and calm inspired from God.

صُلْح

root: ص-ل-ح

صُلح refers to peace between people, or peace between a person and an idea. So, reconciling or coming to terms with something.

It also means “compromise”.

لِئْم

root: ل-ء-م

This word sounds so beautiful to my ears, and its root is very interesting.

ل-ء-م carries notions of dressing a wound, repairing, and harmony… in addition to the idea of wickedness and evil. Maybe we’ve heard of another word from this root before: لَئيم, mean.

هَدْء • هُدوء • هَداءة

root: ه-د-ء

I think of the word هُدوء and I instantly think of one of al-Saddiq al-Raddi’s poems.

The root ه-د-ء is associated with slowing down, or the calming of a storm.

هُدْنة • هُدون

root: ه-د-ن

We’ll usually see هُدنة in contexts where it means “truce”. Its roots lie in the idea of becoming quiet.

So these are just some of the words we find in Arabic that mean “peace”, seventeen of them (if I’ve counted right; if not—I still won’t change the title).

Which other words could be added to this list?

!في أمان الله