اِسْتِقْرار
root: ق-ر-ر / form X verbal noun / definition: settling down, stability
For the past month, studying productively (and at all) has been a struggle. I’ve been settling into a new life and trying to settle back into a study routine—at a time that my annual, late-autumn sleepiness lulls me into cognitive numbness.
I’m fighting that numbness by forcing myself to engage with reading through not-worth-mentioning ways, and rebuke myself for drinking that sleep-inducing hot chocolate before my study session today.
I’m currently working on the second main chapter of my PhD, which means returning to a novel I’ve mentioned several times before in my posts.
Yes, it’s Ahmed Saadawi’s فرانكشتاين في بغداد. And this week (perhaps in an attempt to engage), I’ve decided to gather some of the words and phrases I came across today in the novel that reminded me of previous posts here on the blog.
Let’s take a look:
تهفهف
Oh, I do love a reduplicated quadriliteral.
هَفهَفَ / يُهَفهِفُ is a form I quadriliteral verb meaning “to float in the air”, derived from the duplicated triliteral verb هَفَّ / يَهِفُّ.
We looked at another reduplicated quadriliteral in last week’s post: Arabic Observations: Reflections on حصحص and the Truth.
ما عدا
This phrase, ما عدا, takes us back to a grammar post (one I particularly love, at that) which I wrote back in 2020: (Over) Seven Ways to Say “Except” in Arabic–Plus the Grammar.
Get your notepad out, it’s worth the read.
المفتوح على مصراعيه
My beloved Wehr Wednesdays series is full of useful words and phrases, you know. (And you’ll find the links to vocab quizzes in each post!)
We looked at the phrase مفتوح على مصراعيه in Wehr Wednesdays #161.
لقاءَ
We might be familiar with لِقاءٌ as a noun, meaning “meeting”.
But how many of us are familiar with it as a preposition, لِقاءَ, meaning “in exchange for”?
كانوا قد قلبوا
Here we have an example of a structure in Arabic which translates to the pluperfect in English. Read about it in كان Plus a Past Tense Verb.
And once you’ve read that, don’t forget to read كان Plus the Future Tense.
There we have it: evidence I opened a book today. Very proud moment, if I must say so myself, even (or especially?) as a third-year PhD student.
Now it’s time to let that late-autumn sleepiness take me to my pillow.
.تصبحون على خير
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Fabulous!