Quranic root
خبل
kh · b · l
A root oriented toward impairment, corruption, or disorder, especially affecting bodily members and faculties.
The core notion of bodily فساد extends to mental derangement, damaged or disordered affairs, loss, destruction, distress, and related figurative uses. The lending and livestock-management terms are treated as a divergent lexical branch.
- Maqāyīs · row 1511
- 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.
خَبَال
khabāl
- 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.
Corruption, vitiation, or damaging disorder.
In the Quranic occurrences, خبال denotes corruption or harmful disorder brought about in people's affairs, rather than the broader Classical senses of mental derangement, bodily impairment, or literal destruction.
- Lane · entry 18402
- Mufradāt · row 388
Selected Quran examples
Quran 3:118word 11
“(any) ruin”
Quran 9:47word 7
“(in) confusion”
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
خَبِلَ
To become corrupt, unsound, vitiated, or disordered; hence, to become mentally deranged or insane.
Also used of a limb or member that becomes impaired, immobile, dried up, lost, or cut off.
- Lane · entry 18393
خَبِلَ
To be afflicted with paralysis.
The cited term for the paralysis is فَالِج.
- Lane · entry 18393
خَبَلَهُ
To render someone mentally deranged or to corrupt, impair, or disorder his reason, heart, or limb.
The subject may be grief, love, time, fortune, disease, or another cause; the construction may describe deprivation of reason or impairment of a member.
- Lane · entry 18393
خَبَلَهُ
To restrain, withhold, debar, prevent, or hinder someone.
Commonly followed by عَنْ with the thing from which someone is prevented.
- Lane · entry 18393
خَبَلَ عَنْ
To fall short of performing or matching an action.
Attested in the expression خَبَلَ عَنْ فِعْلِ أَبِيهِ.
- Lane · entry 18393
إِخْبَال
The lending of an animal for use, such as riding, obtaining milk, or travel.
Especially used of lending a she-camel, horse, camels, or sheep and goats.
- Lane · entry 18395
إِخْبَال
Dividing one's camels into two groups so that each group breeds in alternate years.
A livestock-management practice compared with alternating cultivation of land.
- Lane · entry 18395
اِخْتَبَلَ
Of a beast, to cease remaining in its customary place.
- Lane · entry 18396
اِسْتَخْبَلَ
To seek to corrupt, impair, or disorder some of another person's camels.
The object is livestock in the cited construction.
- Lane · entry 18397
اِسْتَخْبَلَ / اِسْتِخْبَال
To ask for or seek a loan, especially of livestock; a loan or a demand for a loan.
The cited livestock construction concerns borrowing an animal or herd until a time of abundance; the broader nominal use is reported of anything.
- Lane · entry 18397
خَبْل
Corruption, unsoundness, or disabling disorder of the limbs or members.
Includes impairment of a person's limbs or of a beast's legs, inability to walk, and the paralysis termed فَالِج.
- Lane · entry 18397
خَبْل
The cutting off or loss of arms, hands, legs, or feet.
The plural خُبُول is attested in claims involving blood and severed limbs.
- Lane · entry 18397
خَبْل
A wound, or wounds for which compensation or redress is claimed.
- Lane · entry 18397
خَبْل
Trial, punishment, slaughter, civil conflict, discord, or dissension.
A figurative or extended use equated with فِتْنَة and هَرْج.
- Lane · entry 18397
اِسْتِخْبَال
An addition paid beyond what a camel-owner or attendant imposes by stipulation.
- Lane · entry 18397
خُبْل
An incoming thought or idea.
Attested in the idiom وَقَعَ فِي خُبْلِي, comparable to “it came into my mind.”
- Lane · entry 18398
خَبَل
Jinn or genii; also a devil.
Some authorities also apply the term to mankind; the plural and quasi-plural usage varies in the lexical reports.
- Lane · entry 18399
خَبَل
A bird said to cry throughout the night with a single repeated cry.
- Lane · entry 18399
خَبَل
A leather water-bag or waterskin, especially a full one.
- Lane · entry 18399
خَبِل
Corrupted, unsound, disordered, or mentally deranged; of a person, also lacking heart or having impaired extremities; of a beast, impaired in the legs.
An adjective covering mental and bodily impairment, including a condition likened to amputated extremities.
- Lane · entry 18400
خَبِل
Difficult or unhappy, said of a time or period.
A figurative use for a time in which its people see no happiness.
- Lane · entry 18400
خُبْلَة
Corruption resulting from a wound.
- Lane · entry 18401
خَبَال
A corrupt, unsound, vitiated, or disordered state in actions, bodies, or minds; including mental derangement, foolishness, heedlessness, or weakness of intellect.
This broader Classical sense includes an affection resembling possession or insanity and is distinct from the specifically Quranic use of خبال for corruption or harmful disorder in affairs.
- Lane · entry 18402
خَبَال
Loss or diminution.
A derived or extended sense equated with نُقْصَان.
- Lane · entry 18402
خَبَال
Perdition, destruction, wasting away, or being consumed.
Describes a thing's going, passing, or wasting away.
- Lane · entry 18402
خَبَال
The hollow-sided, deteriorated condition of an old well.
The hollow may catch and lacerate a bucket as it enters.
- Lane · entry 18402
خَبَال
Fatigue, weariness, distress, embarrassment, affliction, trouble, or difficulty.
May describe a person who is a source of hardship or trouble to his family.
- Lane · entry 18402
خَبَال
A deadly poison.
- Lane · entry 18402
خَبَال
The fluid squeezed or flowing from the inhabitants of Hell or from their skins.
Attested in the expression طِينَةُ الْخَبَال.
- Lane · entry 18402
خَابِل
Corrupting, rendering unsound, vitiating, or disordering, especially the reason or intellect.
The form may be used intensively with the corresponding impairment term.
- Lane · entry 18403
مُخَبِّل
A proper name for Time.
- Lane · entry 18406
مُخْتَبِلُ دَابَّة
The legs of a beast.
A rare reported usage whose correctness is explicitly questioned in the lexical evidence.
- Lane · entry 18408
Cautions
Points that affect how this root should be read.
The reported meaning مُخْتَبِلُ دَابَّةٍ “the legs of a beast” is explicitly treated as doubtful in the lexical evidence.