A new word or phrase from the Hans Wehr dictionary, every Wednesday.

Learning Arabic, one page at a time
A new word or phrase from the Hans Wehr dictionary, every Wednesday.
واحِد
root: و-ح-د / active participle of form I / definition: one
Do you know the different ways to say “one of” in Arabic? It seems quite a simple thing, but I remember that I didn’t actually learn these three ways until my third year of university.
And if you haven’t learnt them yet, keep reading!
Continue reading “Three Ways to Say “One of” in Arabic”A new word or phrase from the Hans Wehr dictionary, every Wednesday.
اِخْتِصار
root: خ-ص-ر / noun / plural: اِختِصارات / definition: abbreviation
So, admittedly, this may not be the most interesting post you’ll read on this blog. But anything that helps with understanding the Hans Wehr dictionary—and, by extension, Arabic—is worth posting, in my opinion.
Continue reading “Reference: A List of Abbreviations in the Hans Wehr Dictionary”A new word or phrase from the Hans Wehr dictionary, every Wednesday.
تَرْتيب
root: ر-ت-ب / verbal noun of form II / plural: تَرْتيبات / definition: order, sequence
I just couldn’t resist another post in the Arabic Observations series this week! (But an in-demand post about the Hans Wehr dictionary is coming soon! Can you guess what it might be?)
For this post, we’re taking things down to the root again and looking at words with the same root letters in a different sequence. Could there be any connection between the meanings of these words?
Continue reading “Arabic Observations: Same Root Letters, Different Sequence”A new word or phrase from the Hans Wehr dictionary, every Wednesday.
شَمس
root: ش-م-س / noun / plural: شُموس / definition: sun
Welcome back! For our fifth post in the literature translation series, we’re taking a look at an excerpt from the famous novel رجال في الشمس (Men in the Sun) by the Palestinian writer غسان كنفاني (Ghassan Kanafani).
Continue reading “Step-by-Step Arabic Literature Translation #5”A new word or phrase from the Hans Wehr dictionary, every Wednesday.
أَرْبَعَة
root: ر-ب-ع / noun / definition: four
We couldn’t go much longer without another synonyms post (even though my posts-to-write list is ever-expanding with other wonderful things)—so this week we’re taking a look at four different roots that we can use to express the meaning of “on the verge of” in Arabic.
Continue reading “Four Arabic Roots to Express the Phrase “on the Verge of””A new word or phrase from the Hans Wehr dictionary, every Wednesday.
جَذْر
root: ج-ذ-ر / noun / plural: جُذور / definition: root
I feel a very nerdy rush of excitement as I begin this post, because it’s the first in the new Root Exploration series!
In this series of posts, we’re going to take a single Arabic root and explore all of its different forms, derivatives, and collocations—using the Hans Wehr (no surprise there!) as our reference.
Continue reading “Root Exploration: ك-ش-ف”A new word or phrase from the Hans Wehr dictionary, every Wednesday.
بَديل
root: ب-د-ل / noun / plural: بَدائِل / definition: substitute, alternative
Another day, another grammar post! I just love finding different ways to express the same word or structure in Arabic—although perhaps you already know that, considering the fact that this blog has a synonyms series.
This week, I’m presenting you with an alternative way to express the pluperfect tense, instead of using the previously-discussed “كان + a past tense verb” construction.
Continue reading “Using سبق أن”A new word or phrase from the Hans Wehr dictionary, every Wednesday.
اِستِعارة
root: ع-و-ر / noun / plural: اِستِعارات / definition: metaphor
And… we’re back with the fourth post in the literature translation series! This time, we’re going through an excerpt from another poem: مَسرَح (Theatre) by الصادق الرضي (Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi), whose poetry I previously mentioned in this post.
Continue reading “Step-by-Step Arabic Literature Translation #4”A new word or phrase from the Hans Wehr dictionary, every Wednesday.
مُلاحَظة
root: ل-ح-ظ / noun / plural: مُلاحَظات / definition: observation
The title might appear somewhat complex, but this topic is just plain cool.
If you’ve been keeping up with the Arabic Observations series, you might remember the post Arabic Observations: Doubled Roots, where we looked at the properties and meanings of roots such as ع-س-ع-س and د-ن-د-ن and ب-ء-ب-ء.
And now, it’s time to share another one of my observations: some of these reduplicated roots have duplicated versions.
Continue reading “Arabic Observations: Duplicated Roots with Reduplicated Forms”A new word or phrase from the Hans Wehr dictionary, every Wednesday.
تَرادُف
root: ر-د-ف / noun / definition: synonymity
It’s hard to believe: it’s almost been a full year since I started posting on The Arabic Pages, and Wehr Wednesdays #49 was our 100th post! (Most surprising is that I’ve kept up with two posts a week. Two!)
As for today’s post—a.k.a. #101—we’re diving into another edition of the synonyms series with five Arabic verbs for “to include”.
Continue reading “Five Arabic Verbs for “to Include””