Quranic root
حرض
ḥ · r · ḍ
The root has two distinct lexical axes: a plant axis represented by حُرْضٌ, the alkali plant, and إِحْرِيضٌ, safflower; and an axis of wasting, deterioration, weakness, and approaching destruction.
The deterioration axis extends from bodily or mental disorder and wasting to near death, destruction, and related causative uses. Derived forms also include urging someone toward action, conventionally understood as removing or overcoming a state of debility. The plant vocabulary remains a separate lexical branch.
- Maqāyīs · row 1338
- 2
- Quran-attested forms
- 3
- Quran senses
- 3
- Quran occurrences
Forms in the Quran
The forms this root actually takes in the Quran. Select one to jump to its senses and examples.
حَرَّضَ
ḥarraḍa
- 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 urge, incite, or encourage someone to undertake an action, rousing determination and making the undertaking seem manageable.
Takes عَلَى with the action or matter urged. In the Quranic occurrences it is an imperative urging believers to fight or persevere in fighting.
- Lane · entry 14116
- Mufradāt · row 312
Selected Quran examples
Quran 4:84word 9
“And encourage”
Quran 8:65word 3
“Urge”
حَرَضٌ
ḥaraḍun
- 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.
Extreme debility or wasting, approaching death; a condition in which a person is no longer reckoned with because illness or grief has consumed the person’s strength.
In the Quranic usage, it describes the state to which Jacob is said to be brought by prolonged grief. The lexical explanation includes being heavily oppressed by disease, emaciated by grief or excessive love, and near death.
- Lane · entry 14121
- Mufradāt · row 312
Selected Quran examples
Quran 12:85word 8
“fatally ill”
The alkali plant known as أُشْنَان, used for washing and for obtaining potash.
This is reported as the interpretation of a variant Quranic reading at Yusuf 12:85; it is distinct from the standard QAC reading and contextual sense at that location.
- Lane · entry 14120
Occurrences in the Quran
Every place this root appears, in Quran order. The first few are shown here.
View all 3 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 23 Classical meanings
حَرِضَ
To become physically disordered or diseased; to waste away through grief or excessive love, become heavily oppressed by illness, and approach or reach death.
An intransitive Form I use, said of the stomach or of a person; one form is also reported for dying or perishing.
- Lane · entry 14115
حَرُضَ، حَرَضَ
To become low, base, mean, sordid, bad, corrupt, or neglected.
A Classical Form I use with the forms and vocalizations reported in the lexical evidence.
- Lane · entry 14115
حَرِضَ
To pick up safflower, إِحْرِيض, from the ground.
A specialized verbal use referring to the plant name إِحْرِيض.
- Lane · entry 14115
حَرَّضَ
To rid someone of حَرَض, removing a debilitating or corrupting condition.
A causative Form II use with the opposite direction from the urging sense: removal of the condition called حَرَض.
- Lane · entry 14116
حُرْضَةٌ
A person entrusted with turning, shuffling, or dealing the gaming arrows in the game of maysir; by extension, a low or mean person who eats meat only when it is provided by others.
The term is associated with the person who deals the arrows without contributing to the slaughtered animal and with the corresponding social judgment.
- Lane · entry 14116
- Lane · entry 14124
حَرَّضَ
To employ designated property in trade involving حُرْض, the alkali plant.
A specialized Form II commercial use.
- Lane · entry 14116
حَرَّضَ
To dye a garment or piece of cloth with safflower, إِحْرِيض.
A specialized Form II use referring to safflower dye.
- Lane · entry 14116
حَارَضَ
To contend with another in shuffling or playing with gaming arrows.
A Form III reciprocal use connected with the gaming-arrow vocabulary.
- Lane · entry 14117
حَارَضَ
To apply oneself constantly or perseveringly to work or to fighting.
A Form III construction with عَلَى and the activity pursued.
- Lane · entry 14117
أَحْرَضَ
To cause someone to become sick, disordered, or near death; disease, food, or love may be the causing force.
A causative Form IV use applied to disease, food that makes one ill, or love that disorders a person.
- Lane · entry 14118
أَحْرَضَ
To corrupt, vitiate, mar, destroy, annul, or render something void; also, to destroy oneself or one’s own soul.
A transitive and reflexive figurative extension of deterioration and destruction.
- Lane · entry 14118
أَحْرَضَ
To beget evil offspring.
A specialized Form IV use reported in Classical Arabic.
- Lane · entry 14118
حَرَضٌ
Corruptness or disorder in the body, intellect, or course of conduct.
A nominal description of corruption, including bodily and intellectual disorder and corrupt conduct.
- Lane · entry 14121
حَرَضٌ
Weariness, physical wasting, or debility; an extremely aged and weak person or a thing that is withering.
A broader Classical range of the debility branch beyond the specific Quranic state of approaching death.
- Lane · entry 14121
حَرَضٌ
A person possessing no good: base, mean, sordid, bad, corrupt, neglected, or forsaken; one whose good is not hoped for and whose evil is not feared.
Applied as a characterization of a person and of low moral or social standing.
- Lane · entry 14121
حَرَضٌ
A weak or ineffective person who does not take up arms or fight.
The term can refer collectively to weak men who will not fight or who have no effective fighting capacity.
- Lane · entry 14121
حَرَضٌ
Of a camel, lean or emaciated; also vile or perishing.
The evidence specifically records applications to she-camels and, for the perishing sense, to a male camel as well.
- Lane · entry 14121
حَرَضٌ
Bad or perishing language or speech.
A figurative nominal use applied to language or speech.
- Lane · entry 14121
حُرْضٌ
Gypsum.
A separate nominal plant/mineral vocabulary use, distinct from the alkali-plant sense.
- Lane · entry 14120
حَرَّاضٌ
A person who burns حُرْض or other alkali plants to obtain potash; also one who fires hard stone to prepare quicklime or gypsum.
An occupational noun for processing alkali plants or stone by fire.
- Lane · entry 14128
حَرَّاضَةٌ
A place where alkali plants are burned to make potash, or where quicklime or gypsum is prepared by fire.
A place noun covering the two recorded firing and preparation activities.
- Lane · entry 14129
إِحْرِيضٌ
Safflower, عُصْفُر; also its grain or safflower used in cooked meat.
A plant noun with the recorded culinary and general-name applications.
- Lane · entry 14131
مِحْرَضَةٌ
A vessel for حُرْض or أُشْنَان, made of wood, brass, or similar material.
A specialized container noun; its plural is مَحَارِضٌ.
- Lane · entry 14133
Cautions
Points that affect how this root should be read.
حَرَضٌ in Yusuf 12:85 has a reported variant reading interpreted as حُرْضٌ, the alkali plant; the standard QAC occurrence is represented separately in the debility sense.
The QAC Form II entries are imperative surface forms; the public headword is normalized to the Classical Arabic perfect citation form حَرَّضَ.