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س

العربية · Thesaurus

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س¹

  • /siːn/ letter, name
  • /s/ phoneme

Where it comes from

From Nabataean 𐢝 (š), from Classical Syriac ܫ (š), from Aramaic ש (š), from Imperial Aramaic 𐡔 (š), from the Egyptian 𓌒.

This letter stood for /ʃ/ in Aramaic. 𐢖 was not adopted into the Arabic alphabet because of the following considerations:

Proto-Semitic has three fricatives that became sibilants in descendant languages: ś, š, s. In Arabic ś gave /ʃ/, but š and s merged to /s/. In Old Aramaic all three sibilants were distinguished, and s was represented by 𐢖 / ס / 𐡎 while 𐢝 / ש / 𐡔 represented both ś and š. This orthography persisted in later Aramaic even to the time of the Nabataeans, when the pronunciation of ś merged with that of s /s/.

So when a scribe wanted to write the Arabic sound /ʃ/ from ś, he did so by using 𐢝 / س purposefully in order to stick to a letter form that looks the same in the cognate Aramaic words (where it represented /s/). But when he wanted to write an Arabic sound /s/ from Proto-Semitic š, he would defy the Aramaic spelling for this Proto-Semitic phoneme (spelled in Aramaic as ש / 𐡔 and pronounced /ʃ/) were he to represent this Arabic phoneme by the sign 𐢖 / ס / 𐡎, whereas Arabic-Aramaic word pairs with the Proto-Semitic s are – somewhat by coincidence – rare and there was hence only negligible pressure to employ 𐢖 / ܣ / ס / 𐡎, in total. So the impression was that 𐢝 / ש / 𐡔 / س is the most typical sign to write /s/ while the other possible sign fell out of use.

letter sīn

  1. letter The twelfth letter of the Arabic alphabet, written in the Arabic script; preceded by ز (z) and followed by ش (š).

symbol sīn

  1. The fifteenth numeral symbol of the Arabic alphabet (traditional abjad order, used for list numbering), written in the Arabic script; preceded by ن (n) and followed by ع (ʕ).
  2. x, an unknown variable

س²

Where it comes from

Shortened form of سَوْفَ (sawfa).

particle سَـ · sa-

  1. will (prefix indicating the future tense) يَقْرَأُ كِتَابًا، سَيَقْرَأُ كِتَابًا

    Similar: سَوْفَ

In English

  • X unknown quantity or unknown value

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Cite this
MLA

"س." Wiktionary, via Micwyn, micwyn.com/word/ar/%D8%B3. Accessed 6 Nov. 2026.

APA

س. (n.d.). In Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Retrieved November 6, 2026, from https://micwyn.com/word/ar/%D8%B3

Chicago

"س." Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Accessed November 6, 2026. https://micwyn.com/word/ar/%D8%B3.

BibTeX
@misc{micwyn_2026,
  title = {س},
  howpublished = {Wiktionary, via Micwyn},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://micwyn.com/word/ar/%D8%B3},
  urldate = {2026-11-06}
}