Quranic root
مصر
m · ṣ · r
The root preserves three principal lexical branches: drawing out milk or a small yield, delimiting or bounding, and the intestine as a bodily passage.
The delimitation branch yields مِصْر for a bounded district, city, or country, and derived verbs for establishing or becoming a city. The extraction branch concerns milking or drawing out something gradually, while the anatomical branch is lexicalized in مَصِيرٌ.
- Maqāyīs · row 4390
- Mufradāt · row 1371
- Lane · entry 12726
- Lane · entry 12728
- Lane · entry 12729
- 1
- Quran-attested forms
- 2
- Quran senses
- 5
- Quran occurrences
Forms in the Quran
The forms this root actually takes in the Quran. Select one to jump to its senses and examples.
مِصْر
miṣr
- Part of speech
- Noun / Proper noun
- Quran occurrences
- 5 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.
A city or town, understood as a bounded settlement in the common-noun use.
In 2:61, the indefinite form مِصْرًا is read as a city or town; another interpretation takes the word as the proper name Egypt.
- Mufradāt · row 1371
- Lane · entry 12728
Selected Quran examples
Quran 2:61word 32
“(to) a city”
Egypt, the country, used as a proper name.
This proper-name use is represented by the four QAC proper-noun occurrences at 10:87, 12:21, 12:99, and 43:51.
- Mufradāt · row 1371
- Lane · entry 12728
Selected Quran examples
Quran 10:87word 8
“in Egypt”
Quran 12:21word 5
“Egypt”
Quran 12:99word 10
“Egypt”
Quran 43:51word 10
“(of) Egypt”
Occurrences in the Quran
Every place this root appears, in Quran order. The first few are shown here.
View all 5 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 14 Classical meanings
مَصَّرَ
To make a place a boundary or dividing limit between two things.
Form II; the object may be a town or place made into a مِصْر in the boundary sense.
- Lane · entry 12726
مَصَّرَ
To establish, designate, or build a place as a city or town.
Form II; also used of founding or appointing cities such as al-Basrah and al-Kufah.
- Lane · entry 12726
مَصَّرَ
To give or provide something little by little.
A Form II use describing gradual rather than immediate provision.
- Maqāyīs · row 4390
تَمَصَّرَ
Of a place: to become a city or town.
Form V in the inchoative or developmental construction.
- Lane · entry 12727
مِصْرٌ
A partition, barrier, intervening thing, or boundary between two things or lands.
The plural is مُصُورٌ; the word is also used for boundaries recorded in property contracts.
- Lane · entry 12728
مِصْرٌ
A great town or provincial city; in a technical usage, a major settlement where civic, legal, or revenue-distribution functions are carried out.
The technical descriptions are lexicographic specifications of a major urban center, not requirements for every use of the word.
- Lane · entry 12728
مَصِيرٌ
The gut or intestine through which food passes from the stomach.
The broad sense is intestine; one reported specialization applies the term to certain birds and hoofed animals.
- Lane · entry 12729
مُصْرَانُ الفَأْرَةِ
A bad variety of dates.
A tropical or figurative lexical usage of the expression.
- Lane · entry 12729
مَصَرَ
To milk by gathering the fingertips over the udder and drawing out the milk.
The action is specifically described as extracting milk from the udder by the fingertips.
- Maqāyīs · row 4390
- Mufradāt · row 1371
تَمَصَّرَ
To milk the remnants of milk left in the udder.
The term can extend to drawing out a scanty yield little by little.
- Maqāyīs · row 4390
- Mufradāt · row 1371
امْتَصَرَ
To draw out or extract a small yield gradually.
Used literally of obtaining residual milk and figuratively of drawing on a scanty source of income or benefit.
- Mufradāt · row 1371
ثَوْبٌ مُمَصَّرٌ
A cloth saturated with dye.
A lexicalized descriptive use of the passive participle.
- Mufradāt · row 1371
نَاقَةٌ مَصُورٌ
A she-camel that withholds its milk and does not readily let it out.
The description concerns milk that is slow to emerge or difficult to extract.
- Maqāyīs · row 4390
- Mufradāt · row 1371
مَاصِرٌ
A barrier between two bodies of water.
A derived noun belonging to the delimitation branch.
- Mufradāt · row 1371
Cautions
Points that affect how this root should be read.
In 2:61, مِصْرًا has a recognized interpretive distinction between the common-noun reading “a city or town” and the proper-name reading “Egypt”; the QAC morphology marks this occurrence as a common noun, while the other four occurrences are proper nouns.