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Quranic root

سلق

s · l · q

The root has several divergent lexical branches rather than one securely unifying derivational principle. A prominent branch concerns forceful impact or spreading, extended from bodily action to forceful speech.

Alongside the forceful-action branch reflected in Quranic speech, the lexical record preserves independent branches for laying down, marking or abrading, cooking, terrain, natural disposition, animals, and medical conditions.

  • Maqāyīs · row 2474
  • Mufradāt · row 718
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Quran-attested forms
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Quran senses
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Quran occurrences

Forms in the Quran

The forms this root actually takes in the Quran. Select one to jump to its senses and examples.

سَلَقَ

salaqa

Part of speech
Verb · Form I
Form
I
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.

  1. To assail or hurt forcefully with the tongue; to address someone harshly or vehemently.

    In the Quranic construction سَلَقُوكُمْ بِأَلْسِنَةٍ حِدَادٍ, the force is verbal assault or smiting with sharp tongues. The physical sense of striking is a related Classical usage, not the required object of this construction.

    • Lane · entry 41912
    • Mufradāt · row 718
    Selected Quran examples

    Quran 33:19word 19

    they smite you

Occurrences in the Quran

Every place this root appears, in Quran order. The first few are shown here.

  • 33:19سَلَقُوكُمthey smite you
View all 1 occurrences

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 42 Classical meanings
  • سَلَقَ

    To throw someone down on the back or back of the neck; to prostrate or extend someone on the back.

    Also used of a physician extending a person on the back.

    • Lane · entry 41912
  • سَلَقَ

    To lay a woman down and have sexual intercourse with her; to spread and compress her while so laid.

    A specific transitive construction referring to laying the woman on her back; the lexical evidence does not impose a narrower age or social-status restriction.

    • Lane · entry 41912
    • Mufradāt · row 718
  • سَلَقَ

    To thrust or pierce, push back, repel, dash against, or strike forcefully.

    This is the physical-impact branch of the verb and its verbal noun, distinct from the Quranic tongue-based construction.

    • Lane · entry 41912
  • سَلَقَ

    Of feet or hoofs, to mark or make tracks upon a road.

    A conventional intransitive use with feet, hoofs, or similar means of marking.

    • Lane · entry 41912
  • سَلَقَ

    To abrade or strip a surface: to flay with a whip, gall skin, abrade a rider’s thigh, peel flesh from bone, or remove hair or fur with hot water.

    The objects and means vary by construction; these are related surface-removal and abrasion uses.

    • Lane · entry 41912
  • سَلَقَ

    To boil or cook with water, especially herbs, leguminous plants, eggs, or other food.

    The verb can describe slight boiling, boiling merely in water, or cooking with hot water.

    • Lane · entry 41912
  • سَلَقَ

    Of cold, to nip, shrivel, or blast herbage and plants.

    A transitive use in which cold damages vegetation.

    • Lane · entry 41912
  • سَلَقَ

    To oil or grease a leather water-bag or hide; to smear a camel with tar.

    Used of treating leather or an animal’s surface with an oily or coating substance.

    • Lane · entry 41912
  • سَلَقَ

    To fasten a sack by inserting one loop into the other, or inserting the stick into the loop.

    A technical packing construction used with the loops of a جوالق or related sacks.

    • Lane · entry 41912
  • سُلَاقٌ

    A pustular, scaling, excoriative, or roughened condition affecting the tongue, mouth, teeth-roots, or eyelids.

    In the mouth it may involve pimples or scaling at the roots of the teeth; in the eye it involves roughness and redness of the eyelids, sometimes with loss of eyelashes.

    • Lane · entry 41912
    • Lane · entry 41915
    • Lane · entry 41923
  • سَلِيقَةٌ

    Innate nature, natural disposition, or constitution.

    Also used in the phrase هٰذِهِ الَّتِي سُلِقَ عَلَيْهَا, referring to the constitution or disposition to which someone is naturally adapted.

    • Lane · entry 41912
    • Lane · entry 41925
  • سَلَقَ

    To call out, cry out, shout, or raise the voice vehemently, especially in grief or calamity.

    An intransitive use; one attributed alternative explains the verbal noun as a woman’s slapping and scratching her face in mourning, while the vehement-shouting explanation is preferred in the cited discussion.

    • Lane · entry 41912
  • سَلَقَ

    To run.

    An additional intransitive use, as in سَلَقَ سَلْقَةً, “he ran a run.”

    • Lane · entry 41912
  • أَسْلَقَ

    Of a man’s camel, to become white-backed after the healing of galls.

    A Form IV intransitive use describing the healed and whitened back.

    • Lane · entry 41913
  • أَسْلَقَ

    To hunt, snare, or trap a she-wolf.

    A Form IV transitive use with a she-wolf as object.

    • Lane · entry 41913
  • تَسَلَّقَ

    To be or become restless, agitated, or in a state of commotion on one’s bed because of anxiety or pain.

    This use is reported with س; one cited authority says that the better-known form in this sense is with ص.

    • Lane · entry 41914
  • تَسَلَّقَ

    To ascend, climb, or scale a wall.

    A Form V construction with a wall or similar smooth vertical surface as object.

    • Lane · entry 41914
  • اِنْسَلَقَ

    Of the tongue, to become affected with an excoriation; of the eye, to develop the associated redness.

    A Form VII medical use connected with the condition called سُلَاق.

    • Lane · entry 41915
  • اِسْلَنْقَى

    To lie or sleep on one’s back.

    A special derived form, compared in the lexical discussion with اِسْتَلْقَى.

    • Lane · entry 41917
  • سَلْقٌ

    A scar or mark left by a healed gall or sore, or by a strap on a camel; also a track or mark made on a road by feet or hoofs.

    The noun covers marks on an animal’s back or side as well as impressed tracks and similar marks on the ground.

    • Lane · entry 41912
    • Lane · entry 41918
  • سِلْقٌ

    Beet or a related edible herb or plant, especially one whose leaves are cooked.

    A plant name with several reported regional or etymological explanations.

    • Lane · entry 41919
  • سِلْقٌ

    A wolf, especially a she-wolf.

    The term’s gender application is debated in the lexical evidence. The wolf also supplies the comparison in descriptions of a clamorous or overpowering person.

    • Lane · entry 41919
  • سِلْقَةٌ

    A clamorous, long-tongued, vehement, foul, evil, or lewd woman, by comparison with a she-wolf.

    A figurative application of the animal term to a woman’s speech or conduct.

    • Lane · entry 41919
  • سِلْقَةٌ

    A female lizard of the ضَبّ kind, or a female locust after laying her eggs.

    The two animal applications are reported as lexical uses of the same feminine form.

    • Lane · entry 41919
  • سِلْقٌ

    A watercourse or channel through which water flows between elevated or rugged tracts; also an even depressed tract of land.

    The terrain sense has several plural forms and overlaps lexically with related lowland terms.

    • Lane · entry 41919
  • سَلَقٌ

    An even or smooth plain, especially a low tract of good soil or land producing herbage.

    A geographical noun; some descriptions specify a treeless depressed plain or meadow-like lowland.

    • Lane · entry 41920
  • سَلْقَاةٌ

    A mode or act of compressing someone upon the back.

    A specialized noun related to the construction of laying someone on the back.

    • Lane · entry 41922
  • سَلِيقٌ

    Leaves or other plant matter that have fallen from trees or shrubs, or vegetation dried and parched by sun or weather.

    The noun may refer either to fallen leaves or to plant matter affected by heat or cold.

    • Lane · entry 41924
  • سَلِيقٌ

    Honey or a substance built lengthwise by bees along the hive.

    A specialized beekeeping term with variant explanations of the material fabricated by the bees.

    • Lane · entry 41924
  • سَلِيقٌ

    The side of a road.

    The two sides of a road may be called سَلِيقَا الطَّرِيقِ.

    • Lane · entry 41924
  • سَلِيقَةٌ

    Food cooked with water, especially herbs or leguminous plants; also bruised millet cooked with milk or a related famine food.

    A food noun derived from the cooking sense; the reported preparations and ingredients vary by usage.

    • Lane · entry 41925
  • سَلِيقَةٌ

    The place where a camel’s breast-girth strap emerges at the side, or the strips of flesh between the sides.

    A specialized anatomical or harness-related noun with more than one reported explanation.

    • Lane · entry 41925
  • سَلُوقِيٌّ

    A Salūqī hunting dog or a type of coat of mail.

    A nisbah term whose application to dogs and armor is variously related to place names in the lexical record.

    • Lane · entry 41926
  • سَلُوقِيٌّ

    Reportedly, a sword.

    This sense is uncertain: the cited verse is reported to be mistranscribed, leaving the orthography and explanation doubtful.

    • Lane · entry 41926
  • سَلِيقِيٌّ

    Natural, untaught speech or a dialect spoken freely according to native habit rather than learned grammatical usage.

    The term can describe speech that is chaste and eloquent in vocabulary while irregular in inflection, or a speaker’s native desert dialect.

    • Lane · entry 41927
  • سَلُوقِيَّةٌ

    The sitting-place of a ship’s captain.

    A specialized nautical noun.

    • Lane · entry 41928
  • السُّلَاقُ

    A Christian festival commemorating the Ascension of Jesus into Heaven.

    The term is reported as foreign or Syriac Arabicized and is linked by derivational explanation to climbing a wall.

    • Lane · entry 41931
  • سَالِقَةٌ

    A woman who raises her voice in a calamity or at someone’s death, or who slaps her face in mourning.

    The preferred explanation concerns loud wailing; the face-slapping description is also reported.

    • Lane · entry 41932
  • سَيْلَقٌ

    Quick or swift; especially a she-camel with penetrating energy in her pace.

    A feminine epithet applied to a she-camel.

    • Lane · entry 41934
  • الأَسَالِقُ

    The upper interior parts of the mouth, near the uvula and where the tongue rises.

    Used as a plural form with no ordinary singular in this application.

    • Lane · entry 41935
  • مِسْلَقٌ

    An eloquent, forceful speaker or orator; also a sharp, cutting, or eloquent tongue.

    A figurative active-participant noun emphasizing vehemence of voice or speech.

    • Lane · entry 41936
  • مَسْلُوقَةٌ

    A skinned fowl cooked or boiled in water by itself; by extension, boiled meat.

    The lexical record marks this as a colloquial or vulgar term in some usage.

    • Lane · entry 41938

Cautions

Points that affect how this root should be read.

  • The QAC surface سَلَقُ is an inflected Quranic form with an attached pronoun; the public citation form is normalized to سَلَقَ.

  • The root contains several lexically divergent branches, so shared consonants should not be taken as proof of a single direct meaning.

  • The reported sword sense of سَلُوقِيّ is uncertain because the cited verse is said to be mistranscribed.

  • The restless-bed sense of تَسَلَّقَ is reported with س, while one cited authority identifies the better-known form in that sense with ص.