Quranic root
ملح
m · l · ḥ
The root is oriented primarily toward whiteness, from which salt is understood to have received its name, with related extensions involving salinity, coloring, pleasantness, and salt-based practices.
The lexical development proceeds from whiteness to the pale substance salt and saline water, and then to actions involving salt, salt-derived descriptions of color and beauty, and figurative bonds associated with sharing salt.
- Maqāyīs · row 4452
- 1
- Quran-attested forms
- 1
- 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.
مِلْحٌ
milḥun
- 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.
Saline or briny water; water whose taste has become characteristically salty.
In the Quran, مِلْحٌ occurs in the construction مِلْحٌ أُجَاجٌ, describing water that is salt and intensely briny. This Quranic sense concerns saline water rather than every broader classical use of the headword.
- Lane · entry 12963
- Mufradāt · row 1387
Selected Quran examples
Quran 25:53word 9
“salty”
Quran 35:12word 10
“salty”
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 32 Classical meanings
مِلْحٌ
Salt, the substance used to season or make food pleasant.
The ordinary concrete noun; it may be feminine or, less commonly, masculine, and has the plural مِلَاحٌ.
- Lane · entry 12963
مَلَحَ
To salt food, fish, meat, or a hide; to put an appropriate amount of salt into a cooking pot.
The verb is used for salting provisions or hides and for seasoning a pot in the proper quantity.
- Lane · entry 12955
مَلَّحَ، أَمْلَحَ
To put an excessive amount of salt into something and thereby spoil it.
This is the excessive or destructive counterpart to ordinary salting.
- Lane · entry 12955
- Lane · entry 12958
مَمْلُوحٌ
Salted fish.
The passive participial form is preferred in this usage over مَالِحٌ according to the cited lexical discussion.
- Lane · entry 12984
مَلَحَ
To feed camels, sheep, or goats with salty earth or earth mixed with a greater quantity of salt.
This practice is described for animals unable to obtain the relevant salt-tolerant plants.
- Lane · entry 12955
مَلَحَ
To rub an animal’s palate with salt.
The object is typically a camel, sheep, or goat.
- Lane · entry 12955
مَلَحَ، مِلْحٌ، مَلْحَةٌ
To suckle or give suck; suckling, a single feed at the breast, or a sucker.
The branch includes the act of nursing, a single suck or feeding, and the child or creature that suckles.
- Lane · entry 12955
- Lane · entry 12963
- Lane · entry 12966
- Lane · entry 12969
مِلْحٌ
Milk, especially milk received through nursing.
This is a lexical extension associated with suckling and is distinct from the concrete salt and saline-water senses.
- Lane · entry 12963
مَالَحَ
To become someone’s foster-brother through shared nursing.
The derived verb refers to the relationship created by suckling from the same woman, not to literally sucking one another.
- Lane · entry 12957
مَالَحَ
To eat with someone.
This figurative Form III usage is associated with sharing salt or food with another person.
- Lane · entry 12957
مَلُحَ، مَمْلُوحٌ، مِلْحٌ
To become fat; fat or fatness, especially the fatness of a camel or other animal.
The sources include a camel destined for slaughter that is fat or somewhat fat, and مِلْحٌ used figuratively for fat or a small degree of fatness.
- Lane · entry 12955
- Lane · entry 12958
- Lane · entry 12963
- Lane · entry 12984
أَمْلَحَ
To possess milk; by extension, to have fat livestock or other beasts.
The Form IV construction is predicated of a people or group possessing such resources.
- Lane · entry 12958
أَمْلَحَتِ الإِبِلُ
For camels to come to salt water to drink.
This is an intransitive Form IV construction describing the camels’ arrival at saline water.
- Lane · entry 12958
مَلُحَ، مَلِيحٌ
To be goodly, beautiful, pretty, pleasing, or attractive; a person whose counsel is valued or whose company is pleasant.
The branch applies to appearance, color, hearing, conduct, counsel, and agreeable companionship; it is not restricted to any particular gender or object class.
- Lane · entry 12955
- Lane · entry 12963
- Lane · entry 12972
مَلَّحَ، تَمَلَّحَ، مُلْحَةٌ
To produce or affect goodly, graceful, beautiful, or facetious speech; a witty or attractive story, saying, or bon mot.
The usage concerns speech, stories, and conversational style, including affecting cleverness or grace.
- Lane · entry 12956
- Lane · entry 12958
- Lane · entry 12959
- Lane · entry 12967
- Lane · entry 12972
اِسْتَمْلَحَ، أَمْلَحَنِي
To find or esteem someone or something beautiful or pleasing; to grace or recommend someone by speech.
The first construction expresses evaluation, while the second is an imperative request for favorable recommendation or embellishment through speech.
- Lane · entry 12958
- Lane · entry 12961
أَمْلَحُ، مُلْحَةٌ
A coloration marked by whiteness mixed with black, gray, blue, or another hue; variegated white-and-dark coloring.
The description applies to hair, wool, animals, eyes, clothing, trees, dew, and other things. It can describe a white color predominating over black, dusty or clear whiteness, or gray-blue tending toward white.
- Lane · entry 12955
- Lane · entry 12967
- Lane · entry 12980
مَلْحَةٌ
The main body, fathomless deep, or vast expanse of the sea whose extremities cannot be seen.
This is a specialized noun for a great open stretch of sea.
- Lane · entry 12966
مِلْحٌ
Knowledge, science, or learning; by extension, learned people.
The sources record both the abstract sense of knowledge and the collective reference to men of learning.
- Lane · entry 12963
مِلْحٌ
A sacred or inviolable bond, compact, obligation, or confederacy.
The figurative sense is associated with sharing salt or food and the obligation thereby created to honor the relationship.
- Lane · entry 12963
مِلْحُهُ عَلَى رُكْبَتَيْهِ
In the idiom “his salt is upon his knees,” to lack good faith in keeping promises or obligations; by extension, to be easily angered, ill-disposed, or contentious.
The idiom has several closely related explanations: obligations are quickly forgotten or violated, anger is easily stirred, or the person is habitually engaged in altercation.
- Lane · entry 12963
مِلْحٌ، مُلَّاحٌ
A salt-tasting plant of the ḥamḍ class.
The plant is described as useful to camels and sheep and as growing in salty or depressed tracts.
- Lane · entry 12963
- Lane · entry 12976
مُلَاحِيٌّ
A name for certain plants or plant products, including a white elongated grape, a small sweet dried fig, and a species of arāk tree with variegated coloring.
The derivation is variously associated with the color ملحة or with a hot or salt-like taste.
- Lane · entry 12974
مَلَّاحٌ
A seller, possessor, or trader in salt; one who provides salt as travelling provision.
This occupational noun is distinct from the homonymous maritime occupation.
- Lane · entry 12975
مَلَّاحٌ
A sailor, shipman, seaman, or mariner.
The occupation is named in relation to constant work upon salt water.
- Lane · entry 12975
مَلَّاحٌ
One who continually attends a river or waterway to keep its mouth in proper condition.
This is a specialized occupational use distinct from both salt selling and sailing.
- Lane · entry 12975
مَلَّاحَةٌ
A place where salt is generated or produced.
The derived place noun includes the synonymous form مَمْلَحَةٌ.
- Lane · entry 12977
مِمْلَحَةٌ
A container or receptacle in which salt is kept.
The noun may refer to a vessel or any comparable object used for holding salt.
- Lane · entry 12983
مَلَحٌ، أَمْلَحُ
A disease or swelling in the hock, hock-tendon, or corresponding part of a horse’s leg.
The condition is described as less severe than جَرَذٌ; أَمْلَحُ can describe a horse affected by it.
- Lane · entry 12964
- Lane · entry 12980
مِلْحَانُ
A name for a winter month or winter days associated with whiteness from snow or hoarfrost.
The name is variously applied in the reported calendars to Jumādā al-Ākhirah, Jumādā al-Ūlā, or one of the months called Kānūn.
- Lane · entry 12970
المَلْحَاءُ
The part of a camel’s back extending from the withers toward the rump, including the region beneath the hump and its vertebrae.
The term has several closely related anatomical specifications, including the flesh or middle of the back and the portion beneath the hump.
- Lane · entry 12980
مُلْحَةٌ
A curiosity or extraordinary thing.
This is a specialized nominal use distinct from the color and witty-speech senses of مُلْحَةٌ.
- Lane · entry 12967
Cautions
Points that affect how this root should be read.
The two Quranic occurrences attest the saline-water use of مِلْحٌ; the contextual gloss “salty” does not by itself establish the broader classical branches.
The packet reports 92 Lane primary source units in its integrity summary, but the enumerated source_units supplied here contain 82 identifiable units; the coverage ledger preserves every unit_id actually present in the packet.
Unassigned or ambiguous evidence
The declared Lane primary source-unit count (92) conflicts with the enumerated source-unit records, which can be counted as 82. No additional unit_ids can be reconstructed without inventing evidence.