Quranic root
أرب
ʾ · r · b
The root centers on need and the intelligence or contrivance used to meet it, with related branches involving a portion or bodily member and fastening or making complete.
Classical root analysis organizes its derivatives around need, intelligence, portion, and binding. From these develop meanings of urgent desire and stratagem, skill and sagacity, bodily members or complete portions, overcoming, and tightening or completion.
- Maqāyīs · row 60
- 2
- Quran-attested forms
- 3
- Quran senses
- 2
- Quran occurrences
Forms in the Quran
The forms this root actually takes in the Quran. Select one to jump to its senses and examples.
إِرْبَةٌ
ʾirbahun
- Part of speech
- Noun
- Quran occurrences
- 1 occurrence
Selected examples are shown with the sense they illustrate — chosen to teach that sense, not the complete list of this form’s Quran occurrences.
A compelling sexual need or desire; in the Quranic expression أُولِي الإِرْبَةِ, sexual appetite or need for women.
Used in the construction أُولِي الإِرْبَةِ مِنَ الرِّجَالِ in 24:31, describing men who do not possess such sexual desire or need.
- Lane · entry 6468
- Mufradāt · row 26
Selected Quran examples
Quran 24:31word 52
“having no physical desire”
In an alternative reported interpretation of the Quranic expression, intellectual capacity or sound understanding.
This interpretation takes أُولِي الإِرْبَةِ as referring to men deficient in intellect or judgment rather than men lacking sexual desire.
- Lane · entry 6467
- Lane · entry 6468
مَأْرَبَةٌ
maʾrabahun
- Part of speech
- Noun
- Quran occurrences
- 1 occurrence
Selected examples are shown with the sense they illustrate — chosen to teach that sense, not the complete list of this form’s Quran occurrences.
A need, purpose, or desired end; مَآرِبُ, things one needs or seeks to accomplish.
The Quranic plural مَآرِبُ أُخْرَى in 20:18 refers to Moses' other purposes or uses for the staff.
- Lane · entry 6468
- Mufradāt · row 26
Selected Quran examples
Quran 20:18word 12
“(are) uses”
Occurrences in the Quran
Every place this root appears, in Quran order. The first few are shown here.
View all 2 occurrencesBroader Classical Arabic meanings
Recorded for this root in the Classical lexicons beyond its Quran usage. These are secondary to the Quran senses above.
Show 33 Classical meanings
أَرُبَ
To be intelligent, sagacious, discerning, or cunning, with sound judgment and knowledge of affairs.
The verb may denote simple intelligence or intelligence combined with craft and foresight.
- Lane · entry 6461
أَرِبَ بِالشَّيْءِ
To become expert, practiced, or skilled in a thing.
Used with بِـ for becoming familiar with and proficient in a particular matter.
- Lane · entry 6461
أَرِبَ
To become familiar with a person or thing.
A reported use synonymous with becoming accustomed or familiar.
- Lane · entry 6461
أَرِبَ بِالشَّيْءِ
To devote oneself or cling to a thing; to be tenacious or avaricious concerning it.
The construction can describe persistent attachment, acquisitiveness, or unwillingness to relinquish something.
- Lane · entry 6461
أَرِبَ فِي الأَمْرِ / تَأَرَّبَ فِيهِ
To exert one's ability or strength in an affair, strain oneself, and understand or manage it.
Used with فِي for applying one's power or effort to an affair or need.
- Lane · entry 6461
أَرِبَ عَلَيْهِ
To obtain power over someone or something.
The preposition عَلَى marks the person or thing over which power is obtained.
- Lane · entry 6461
أَرِبَ إِلَيْهِ / بِهِ
To be in want or need of something, and consequently want, seek, or desire it.
The object is introduced with إِلَى or بِـ in the reported constructions.
- Lane · entry 6461
أَرِبَ الدَّهْرُ / أَرِبَ عَلَيْهِ
For fortune to become hard or adverse; to press hard upon someone in a demand.
The adverse or demanding force may be expressed by the subject of the verb or by عَلَى.
- Lane · entry 6461
أَرَبَهُ
To strike a member or limb belonging to someone.
The object is a bodily member or limb.
- Lane · entry 6461
أَرِبَ
For a member or limb to be cut off or fall away; in imprecatory expressions, may the limbs fall away or may what is in one's hands depart, leaving one in want.
The reported idioms allow both a literal bodily interpretation and a figurative interpretation of becoming needy.
- Lane · entry 6461
أَرِبَتْ مَعِدَتُهُ
For the stomach to become disordered or unsound.
A bodily-state expression.
- Lane · entry 6461
أَرِبَ
To prostrate oneself firmly or fixedly upon one's bodily members.
Used of firm prostration on the members involved in the posture.
- Lane · entry 6461
أَرَّبَ
To make someone intelligent, skilled, or knowledgeable; to cause someone to understand.
A causative Form II use corresponding to the intelligence and skill meanings of the root.
- Lane · entry 6462
أَرَّبَ
To become avaricious or eagerly desirous of a thing.
Desire is characterized as vehement want or acquisitiveness.
- Lane · entry 6462
أَرَّبَ
To cut up an animal limb by limb.
Reported especially of cutting a sheep or goat into pieces by its members.
- Lane · entry 6462
أَرَّبَ / مُؤَرَّبٌ
To cut off a member or limb whole; a member so cut off entire.
The passive participle may describe a complete, undivided limb removed from the body.
- Lane · entry 6462
- Lane · entry 6481
أَرَّبَ / مُؤَرَّبٌ
To make a thing, portion, or property ample, complete, or perfect; something made whole or fully provided.
The extension includes enlarging a share or property so that it is sufficient and complete.
- Lane · entry 6462
- Lane · entry 6481
- Mufradāt · row 26
آرَبَهُ / مُؤَارَبَةٌ
To strive to outwit, deceive, beguile, or circumvent someone; to practise a stratagem or fraud against someone.
The verbal noun مُؤَارَبَةٌ denotes the attempt to outwit or circumvent another person.
- Lane · entry 6463
آرَبَ عَلَيْهِمْ
To succeed against people and overcome them.
A Form IV construction with عَلَى marking those overcome.
- Lane · entry 6464
تَأَرَّبَ
To affect or endeavour to acquire cunning, intelligence, guile, artifice, or malignity.
The Form V use may describe deliberately cultivating cleverness together with deceit or mischievousness.
- Lane · entry 6465
إِرْبٌ
Intelligence, sagacity, craft, and knowledge of affairs; in one reported use, intelligence joined with religious understanding.
The noun may denote either practical discernment or intelligence characterized as accompanied by religion.
- Lane · entry 6467
إِرْبٌ
Deceit, guile, artifice, or fraud.
A meaning associated with contrivance or crafty manipulation.
- Lane · entry 6467
أَرَبٌ
An extreme or urgent need that prompts contrivance; by extension, the stratagem used in response to such a need.
This narrower branch distinguishes a pressing need from an ordinary need and explains its association with clever maneuvering.
- Mufradāt · row 26
إِرْبٌ
Wickedness, mischievousness, hidden rancor, or malice.
A moral or hostile extension of the root's cunning and contrivance vocabulary.
- Lane · entry 6467
إِرْبٌ / آرابٌ
A member or limb: a distinct, complete part of an animal body.
The plural آرابٌ may refer to the bodily members used in prostration, including the forehead, hands, knees, and feet.
- Lane · entry 6467
- Mufradāt · row 26
إِرْبٌ
The genital member or pudendum.
A reported anatomical meaning; its lexical status is disputed in the cited discussion.
- Lane · entry 6467
آرابٌ
Pieces of flesh or flesh-meat.
A plural use referring to separate pieces of flesh.
- Lane · entry 6467
أَرِيبٌ
Cunning, intelligent, sagacious, and excellent in judgment; knowledgeable in affairs.
An adjective describing a person characterized by intelligence with craft and foresight.
- Lane · entry 6476
آرِبٌ
A wide, ample, or capacious cooking pot.
A lexical noun unrelated in immediate reference to the human intelligence adjective.
- Lane · entry 6476
أَرِبٌ
Expert, skilled, practiced, or accustomed to a thing.
An adjectival use for proficiency or practiced knowledge.
- Lane · entry 6469
أَرِبٌ بِشَيْءٍ
Wanting, needing, or desiring a thing.
The adjective takes a thing as the object of want or desire.
- Lane · entry 6469
أُرَبَى
Calamity or misfortune.
A rare lexical noun for an unwelcome or extraordinary misfortune.
- Lane · entry 6472
أَرَّبَ العُقْدَةَ
To tighten or make a knot secure so that it does not come undone without deliberate untying.
The meaning describes firm fastening and is distinct from merely tying a readily released knot.
- Mufradāt · row 26
Cautions
Points that affect how this root should be read.
The anatomical meaning of إِرْبٌ as a genital member is reported but explicitly disputed in the lexical evidence.
The Quranic expression أُولِي الإِرْبَةِ in 24:31 has both a sexual-need interpretation and an alternative interpretation involving intellectual deficiency; both are preserved separately.