Quranic root
عرف
ʿ · r · f
The root develops two related orientations: ordered succession and settled recognition. From the first come the mane, elevated ridges, and things following one another; from the second come knowing, recognizing, familiarity, and what is accepted as good.
Recognition is portrayed as a settling of the mind toward something rather than recoiling from it. From this extend knowledge by perception or reflection, acknowledgment, mutual acquaintance, recognized goodness, fragrance that is pleasing to the senses, and the various mane-like or elevated forms.
- Maqāyīs · row 3181
- Mufradāt · row 965
- 7
- Quran-attested forms
- 10
- Quran senses
- 70
- Quran occurrences
Forms in the Quran
The forms this root actually takes in the Quran. Select one to jump to its senses and examples.
عَرَفَ
ʿarafa
- Part of speech
- Verb · Form I
- Form
- I
- Quran occurrences
- 20 occurrences
Selected examples are shown with the sense they illustrate — chosen to teach that sense, not the complete list of this form’s Quran occurrences.
To know, recognize, or become acquainted with someone or something.
Quranic usage includes recognition by signs, prior familiarity, perception, or reflective discernment; the passive may mean to become known or recognizable.
- Lane · entry 2827
- Mufradāt · row 965
Selected Quran examples
Quran 2:146word 4
“they recognize it”
Quran 12:58word 6
“and he recognized them”
Quran 33:59word 15
“they should be known”
عَرَّفَ
ʿarrafa
- Part of speech
- Verb · Form II
- Form
- II
- Quran occurrences
- 2 occurrences
Selected examples are shown with the sense they illustrate — chosen to teach that sense, not the complete list of this form’s Quran occurrences.
To make known, disclose, describe, or designate something so that it is recognized.
The construction may take the person informed and the matter made known; in 66:3 it concerns making part of something known.
- Lane · entry 2828
- Mufradāt · row 965
Selected Quran examples
Quran 66:3word 14
“he made known”
To render fragrant, beautify, or make something appealing and familiar by its description.
In the Quranic description of Paradise, the form is explained either as making it fragrant and adorned or as describing and designating it so that its inhabitants recognize their places.
- Lane · entry 2828
- Mufradāt · row 965
Selected Quran examples
Quran 47:6word 3
“He has made it known”
تَعَارَفَ
taʿārafa
- Part of speech
- Verb · Form VI
- Form
- VI
- Quran occurrences
- 2 occurrences
Selected examples are shown with the sense they illustrate — chosen to teach that sense, not the complete list of this form’s Quran occurrences.
To know or become acquainted with one another.
A reciprocal construction denoting mutual recognition or acquaintance.
- Lane · entry 2831
- Mufradāt · row 965
Selected Quran examples
Quran 49:13word 11
“that you may know one another”
Quran 10:45word 10
“they will recognize each other”
اِعْتَرَفَ
āiʿtarafa
- Part of speech
- Verb · Form VIII
- Form
- VIII
- Quran occurrences
- 3 occurrences
Selected examples are shown with the sense they illustrate — chosen to teach that sense, not the complete list of this form’s Quran occurrences.
To acknowledge or confess something, especially a fault or sin.
The form commonly occurs with بِـ or لِـ and presents acknowledgment as an admission rather than mere recognition.
- Lane · entry 2832
- Mufradāt · row 965
Selected Quran examples
Quran 9:102word 2
“(who have) acknowledged”
Quran 40:11word 7
“and we confess”
Quran 67:11word 1
“Then they (will) confess”
أَعْرَاف
ʾaʿrāf
- Part of speech
- Noun · plural
- Quran occurrences
- 2 occurrences
Selected examples are shown with the sense they illustrate — chosen to teach that sense, not the complete list of this form’s Quran occurrences.
The elevated barrier or heights between Paradise and Hell.
In the Quranic expression أَصْحَابُ الْأَعْرَافِ, the inhabitants or occupants of these heights are variously explained in the lexical tradition; the physical referent is the elevated partition or its upper parts.
- Lane · entry 2836
- Mufradāt · row 965
Selected Quran examples
Quran 7:46word 4
“the heights”
Quran 7:48word 3
“(of) the heights”
عُرْف
ʿurf
- Part of speech
- Noun
- Quran occurrences
- 2 occurrences
Selected examples are shown with the sense they illustrate — chosen to teach that sense, not the complete list of this form’s Quran occurrences.
Recognized goodness: an approved good, kindness, beneficence, or proper and moderate conduct.
The Quranic ethical sense denotes what reason, sound custom, or religious law recognizes as good; it can describe fair treatment, gracious speech, and beneficence.
- Lane · entry 2836
- Mufradāt · row 965
Selected Quran examples
Quran 7:199word 4
“the good”
A succession or series of things following one another, like the strands of a mane.
In the oath expression وَالْمُرْسَلَاتِ عُرْفًا, the form is explained as things sent consecutively; it is also interpreted as sent with beneficence. A reported alternative reading with عَرْفًا is kept distinct from the canonical QAC vocalization.
- Lane · entry 2836
- Mufradāt · row 965
Selected Quran examples
Quran 77:1word 2
“one after another”
مَعْرُوفٌ
maʿrūfun
- Part of speech
- Passive participle · adjective / noun
- Quran occurrences
- 39 occurrences
Selected examples are shown with the sense they illustrate — chosen to teach that sense, not the complete list of this form’s Quran occurrences.
Known, recognized, familiar, or identifiable.
This is the ordinary passive-participial value of the form; the feminine occurrence is represented under the same citation form.
- Lane · entry 2860
Selected Quran examples
Quran 24:53word 12
“(is) known”
Recognized as good or appropriate; kind, fair, honorable, or proper treatment.
The Quranic ethical use describes conduct, speech, provision, or treatment approved by reason, sound custom, or religious law, often in the construction بِالْمَعْرُوفِ.
- Lane · entry 2836
- Mufradāt · row 965
Selected Quran examples
Quran 2:231word 10
“in a fair manner”
Quran 4:114word 12
“kindness”
Occurrences in the Quran
Every place this root appears, in Quran order. The first few are shown here.
- 2:89عَرَفُوا۟they recognized
- 2:146يَعْرِفُونَهُۥthey recognize it
- 2:146يَعْرِفُونَthey recognize
- 2:178بِٱلْمَعْرُوفِwith suitable
- 2:180بِٱلْمَعْرُوفِ ۖwith due fairness
Broader Classical Arabic meanings
Recorded for this root in the Classical lexicons beyond its Quran usage. These are secondary to the Quran senses above.
Show 74 Classical meanings
عَرَفَ
To acknowledge or admit something, used in place of اعترف.
A lexical substitution reported in Classical usage, distinct from the ordinary sense of knowing.
- Lane · entry 2827
عَرَفَ
To requite someone according to what he has done.
The object is the person or conduct for which a suitable recompense is made. A reported reading of the Quranic phrase عَرَفَ بَعْضَهُ is associated with this interpretation, but the canonical QAC token at that location is Form II.
- Lane · entry 2827
عَرَفَ
To clip the mane of a horse.
A specialized transitive use with a horse as object.
- Lane · entry 2827
عَرَفَ عَلَى
To act as a عَرِيف: manage or order the affairs of a people or group.
The construction عَرَفَ عَلَى or عَرَفَ عَلَيْهِمْ denotes holding this office.
- Lane · entry 2827
عَرِفٌ
Patience or endurance in the face of an affair, affliction, or misfortune.
The related adjective عَارِفٌ or عَرُوفٌ may describe a person or soul that endures an event.
- Lane · entry 2827
- Lane · entry 2837
- Lane · entry 2852
عَرَفَ
To become submissive, tractable, or manageable.
Said of a person or of a riding animal.
- Lane · entry 2827
عَرُفَ
To be pleasant or sweet in odor.
The subject may be a person or food; this is an odor-related branch, not the recognition sense.
- Lane · entry 2827
عَرِفَ
To make much use of perfume.
A specialized usage concerning habitual application of perfume.
- Lane · entry 2827
عَرِفَ
To relinquish or abstain from perfume.
A separately reported, opposite usage concerning perfume.
- Lane · entry 2827
عَرْفَة
A purulent pustule appearing in the whiteness or palm of the hand.
The meaning is anatomical and medical, and is also used in descriptions of a person bearing such a pustule.
- Lane · entry 2827
- Lane · entry 2839
- Lane · entry 2860
تَعْرِيف
An explanation or making of a term known, less restricted than a formal definition.
This is the technical explanatory noun derived from Form II.
- Lane · entry 2828
عَرَّفَ
To announce and describe a stray animal, lost object, or found property in order to locate its owner.
The construction involves public mention and seeking someone who recognizes the lost thing.
- Lane · entry 2828
عَرَّفَ
To brand or stigmatize someone with his misdeed.
The object is a person and the complement identifies the offense.
- Lane · entry 2828
عَرَّفَ
To saturate or moisten the hair of the head with oil.
A specialized transitive use with hair as object.
- Lane · entry 2828
عَرَّفَ
To give food abundant seasoning or condiment.
A specialized culinary use.
- Lane · entry 2828
عَرَّفَ
To halt or be present at ʿArafāt during the pilgrimage.
This pilgrimage term denotes the ritual stay at ʿArafāt; later usages also describe imitating that assembly elsewhere.
- Lane · entry 2828
عَرَّفَ
To excite evil or mischief between people.
A rare lexical formation reported as a permutation from another root; it is not the ordinary Form II meaning of making known.
- Lane · entry 2828
أَعْرَفَ
To tell someone of his misdeed and then forgive him.
A specialized Form IV construction.
- Lane · entry 2829
أَعْرَفَ
To have a long or abundant mane.
Said particularly of a horse.
- Lane · entry 2829
تَعَرَّفَ
To become known.
Intransitive Form V use.
- Lane · entry 2830
تَعَرَّفَ إِلَى
To make oneself known or introduce oneself to someone.
The construction may involve revealing one's identity; related religious usage speaks of presenting oneself to God through worship.
- Lane · entry 2830
تَعَرَّفَ
To acquaint oneself with, investigate, or learn something through deliberate inquiry and observation.
The form can imply seeking knowledge leisurely, repeatedly, or thoroughly, including examining a place.
- Lane · entry 2830
تَعَرَّفَ
To act with goodness or appropriately.
A rare and attributed lexical explanation connected with عُرْف, goodness.
- Lane · entry 2830
تَعَارَفَ
To vie or compete with one another in boasting or claiming superiority.
A reported non-Quranic reciprocal usage, distinct from mutual acquaintance.
- Lane · entry 2831
اعْتَرَفَ
To acquaint someone with one's name and condition or describe oneself so that one's identity is certified.
This identity-revealing construction is distinct from confessing a misdeed.
- Lane · entry 2832
اعْتَرَفَ
To describe a found object or stray animal so that its owner can be identified.
The purpose is to establish ownership through recognizable description.
- Lane · entry 2832
اعْتَرَفَ
To ask a person or group for information in order to learn it.
A transitive inquiry construction reported for Form VIII.
- Lane · entry 2832
اسْتَعْرَفَ
To seek or desire knowledge, or ask whether someone has knowledge of a person or thing.
The Form X meaning may imply deliberate information-seeking.
- Lane · entry 2833
اسْتَعْرَفَ إِلَى
To mention one's relationship, lineage, or genealogy to someone.
A self-identifying Form X construction.
- Lane · entry 2833
اعْرَوْرَفَ
To have, mount upon, or rise around a mane or mane-like crest.
Said of a horse and, in one usage, of a person mounting the horse's mane.
- Lane · entry 2834
اعْرَوْرَفَ
To rise upon the elevations called the أَعْرَاف.
A rare figurative or assumed-tropical usage associated with the barrier between Paradise and Hell.
- Lane · entry 2834
اعْرَوْرَفَ
For waves of the sea or a torrent, to become high, heaped, or crestlike.
The comparison is with the projecting mane of a horse.
- Lane · entry 2834
- Lane · entry 2836
اعْرَوْرَفَ
For blood, to develop froth resembling a mane.
A figurative physical description.
- Lane · entry 2834
اعْرَوْرَفَ
For palm trees, to become dense, luxuriant, or thickly intermixed.
The comparison is with the mane of a hyena.
- Lane · entry 2834
اعْرَوْرَفَ
To prepare oneself for evil or mischief, raising the head or stretching out the neck for it.
A figurative description of a person adopting an aggressive posture.
- Lane · entry 2834
عَرْف
Odor or scent, whether fragrant or fetid; usually, in favorable contexts, fragrance.
The word may refer to the smell of Paradise or to an unpleasant odor. A reported reading of وَالْمُرْسَلَاتِ عَرْفًا interprets that verse as sent with fragrance, but this is distinct from the canonical عُرْفًا form.
- Lane · entry 2835
عَرْف
A certain plant, including a species identified with panic grass.
A botanical meaning with variant descriptions of the plant.
- Lane · entry 2835
عُرْف
Acknowledgment or confession, especially an admission that something is due.
A substantive derived from acknowledgment or confession, distinct in vocalization from the ethical عُرْف.
- Lane · entry 2836
عُرْف
Commonly known or conventionally received language, usage, or practice.
A technical lexical and legal term, often opposed to what is merely unknown or rejected.
- Lane · entry 2836
عُرْف
The mane of a horse or similar beast; also the neck feathers of a bird or the comb of a cock.
The word may denote the hair, feathers, or flesh-bearing place of growth, and extends metaphorically to a mane-like crest.
- Lane · entry 2836
عُرْفَة
An elevated ridge, tract, or overtopping portion of land, sand, or mountain.
The elevated tract may be open and productive of plants; related plural forms denote elevated places generally.
- Lane · entry 2836
- Lane · entry 2840
أَعْرَاف
The higher or foremost portions of winds, clouds, or mists.
A figurative plural usage based on elevated or crestlike forms.
- Lane · entry 2836
عُرْف
A species or developmental state of palm tree in which it begins to yield fruit.
A regional usage associated with Bahrain and with the palm called بُرْشُوم.
- Lane · entry 2836
عُرْف
The tree of the citron.
A botanical usage.
- Lane · entry 2836
عِرْف
Recognition occurring only at the end or later, in a fixed expression.
This meaning is restricted to the reported idiom مَا عَرَفَ عِرْفِي إِلَّا بِأَخَرَةٍ.
- Lane · entry 2837
عَرْفَة
A question or inquiry about a subject of information in order to learn it.
A nominal form for asking or questioning.
- Lane · entry 2839
عُرْفَة
An open, elongated tract of land producing plants or herbage.
A geographical and botanical use of the feminine noun.
- Lane · entry 2840
عُرْفَة
A boundary or limit between two things.
The plural is reported as عُرَفٌ.
- Lane · entry 2840
يَوْمُ عَرَفَة
The ninth day of Dhū al-Ḥijjah, the day on which pilgrims halt at ʿArafāt.
A fixed calendrical and pilgrimage expression.
- Lane · entry 2842
عَرَفَات
The place or mountain where pilgrims halt on the day of ʿArafah.
A proper place-name in plural form, not ordinarily treated as an ordinary plural. Traditional explanations connect the name with mutual recognition, instruction in the rites, sanctification, or worship.
- Lane · entry 2843
- Mufradāt · row 965
عُرْفِيّ
Relating to common convention, customary usage, or ordinary parlance.
A technical derivative used in expressions concerning customary meaning and customary metaphor.
- Lane · entry 2844
عَرَفِيّ
Relating to ʿArafāt.
A nisbah adjective formed from the proper place-name.
- Lane · entry 2845
عِرِفَّان
A person who acknowledges or confesses a thing and points or directs to it.
An attributed epithet; a variant form عُرُفَّان is also reported.
- Lane · entry 2846
عُرُفَّان
A small creeping creature of the sands, or a large locust-like insect with a crest.
A zoological meaning with regional habitat and plant associations.
- Lane · entry 2846
عَرِيف
A chief, head, or superintendent responsible for managing and knowing the circumstances of a group.
The office is below that of a higher chief in some descriptions; the plural is عُرَفَاء.
- Lane · entry 2848
عَرِيف
A school monitor who hears the lessons of other students.
A later institutional use derived from the supervisory sense.
- Lane · entry 2848
عِرَافَة
The holding or exercise of the office of a عَرِيف.
An abstract noun for the office or its administration.
- Lane · entry 2849
عَرَّاف
A diviner, soothsayer, astrologer, or claimant to knowledge of hidden matters.
The precise division from كاهن is reported differently: the terms may distinguish knowledge of past and future, while both can refer to occult claims.
- Lane · entry 2851
عَرَّاف
A physician.
A separately reported lexical meaning of the same form.
- Lane · entry 2851
عَرَّاف
A person who smells the ground and thereby identifies water locations or the district in which he is.
A specialized tracker or water-finder usage.
- Lane · entry 2851
عَارِف
A knowing or knowledgeable person, especially one well acquainted with affairs.
The form may be intensive and can describe someone who recognizes a person even after seeing him only once.
- Lane · entry 2852
عَارِف
One possessing knowledge of God, His kingdom, and the proper way of dealing with Him.
A specialized religious usage of the active participle.
- Lane · entry 2852
عُوَيْرِف
A person possessing little knowledge, especially one characterized by a sin or crime.
A diminutive of عَارِف with disparaging force.
- Lane · entry 2854
أَعْرَف
Having a mane, crest, or mane-like elevation; full-haired or high-crested.
Applied to horses, serpents, camels, mountains, rugged ground, and other things explicitly compared with a mane; the object examples do not restrict the general adjective.
- Lane · entry 2855
مَعْرَف
The face, visible features, or recognizable parts of the face.
The plural مَعَارِف refers to the parts by which a person is recognized and may extend to the visible or known parts of land.
- Lane · entry 2856
مَعْرَف
Known people, acquaintances, or persons entitled to one's affection.
A plural usage of مَعَارِف based on people with whom one has acquaintance.
- Lane · entry 2856
مَعْرَفَة
The place or flesh on which the mane of a horse grows, from forelock to withers.
This is the place-of-growth noun, distinct from مَعْرِفَة meaning knowledge.
- Lane · entry 2857
مَعْرِفَة
Knowledge, cognition, cognizance, or acquaintance.
The noun denotes knowledge attained through perception, reflection, or becoming acquainted; it is also used in grammar for a determinate noun, but that grammatical use is not a lexical sense here.
- Lane · entry 2858
- Lane · entry 2841
مُعَرَّف
Food made fragrant.
A passive participial use of Form II.
- Lane · entry 2859
مُعَرَّف
Food placed layer upon layer so that its upper portion resembles a mane or crest.
A specialized culinary description.
- Lane · entry 2859
مُعَرَّف
The place of halting at ʿArafāt, or the period after that halt.
A pilgrimage term derived from the Form II use connected with ʿArafāt.
- Lane · entry 2859
مَعْرُوف
Land having a fragrant odor.
A specialized odor-related adjective, distinct from the Quranic ethical and recognizable meanings of مَعْرُوف.
- Lane · entry 2860
مُعْتَرِف
One who confesses or informs against himself concerning an offense liable to punishment.
A substantivized active participle of Form VIII.
- Lane · entry 2861
مُتَعَارَف
Known by common conventional usage.
Applied to a word, phrase, or language recognized within a community.
- Lane · entry 2862
Cautions
Points that affect how this root should be read.
The reported Lane reading عَرَفَ بَعْضَهُ at 66:3 is an alternative reading or interpretation; the canonical QAC occurrence at that location is the Form II group عَرَّفَ, so it is not counted as a canonical Form I occurrence.
The Quranic interpretations of عَرَّفَهَا in 47:6 include making Paradise fragrant or beautified and describing or designating it so that it is recognized; both materially distinct interpretations are retained under Form II.
عُرْفًا in 77:1 is represented according to the canonical QAC form as succession like a mane. Lane also reports interpretations involving beneficence and an alternative reading عَرْفًا meaning fragrance; the latter is not conflated with the canonical QAC vocalization.
The Quranic أَعْرَاف refers to the barrier or elevated parts between Paradise and Hell; explanations of its occupants vary in the cited lexical tradition.