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مَصدَر

What a masdar is

The noun that lives inside every verb, and where you use it

Every Arabic verb has a noun hiding inside it. English does this too: to write gives us writing, to sleep gives us sleep. Arabic calls that noun the masdar, and it is far more common in speech than the English equivalent.

Most three-letter verbs form it on one shape. "كَتَب" gives "كَتْب", "دَرَس" gives "دَرْس", "نام" gives "نَوْم". You have already met several without noticing, because a lot of ordinary nouns are masdars.

Keywords

  • noun
  • noun
  • noun
  • noun

Phrases

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