Arabic Root Finder & Word Family Explorer
Find roots for selected Arabic words and conjugated verbs. Compare meanings, explore word families, and see why spelling alone can be ambiguous.
Enter a word, conjugated verb, or root.
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Dictionary-based lookup across 100 roots, selected nouns, and the conjugator’s verb forms. This is a growing learner collection, not an unrestricted morphological analyzer. Several meanings or roots can match an unvocalized word.
Root ك ت ب
Dictionary match
- مَكْتَبَة — library; bookshop (noun)
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These words share radicals. Their meanings are related historically but are not interchangeable.
Browse supported roots (100)
Make sense of what you’re practicing
Roots are radicals, not the first three letters
مَكْتَبَة (library) belongs to ك ت ب, the same root as كَتَبَ (write). Prefixes, inserted letters, and endings mean that simply deleting vowels or taking three letters gives unreliable answers. This lookup uses known entries and conjugated forms.
Weak and doubled radicals can be hidden
قُلْتُ (I said) belongs to ق و ل even though و is absent. A doubled verb such as مَدَّ has root م د د; shadda represents two consonants. Some Arabic roots have four radicals, such as ه ن د س.
One spelling may hide several meanings
Unvocalized علم can represent عِلْم (knowledge), عَلَم (flag), عَلِمَ (he knew), or عَلَّمَ (he taught). They share a root, but their patterns and meanings differ. A match is a lexical possibility; it does not identify the intended sense in a sentence.
A family is a learning aid, not a translation rule
Words with the same root can develop very different meanings. Learn each word with its pattern and an example. Some plurals are suppletive: خُيُول (horses) has root خ ي ل even when paired with حِصَان (horse), whose root is ح ص ن.