عالم
العربية · Thesaurus
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عالم¹
- /ʕaː.lam/
Where it comes from
Borrowed from Aramaic עָלְמָא / ܥܳܠܡܳܐ (ʿāləmā) or Hebrew עוֹלָם (ʿōlām), possibly from Akkadian 𒂖𒆷𒈬𒌋𒀀 (/ellamu, illamu/, “front, before; both temporally and in location; coming before your time or being currently physically before you now”).
The pattern فَاعَل (fāʕal)
The pattern فَاعَل (fāʕal) is considered originally foreign to Arabic and Ethiopic, occurring only in likely loanwords such as طَابَع (ṭābaʕ), خَاتَم (ḵātam), فَالَج (fālaj). It should be noted some of these loans are suspected to be early, such as خَاتَم (ḵātam) being present in Old Arabian Inscriptions and عَالَم (ʕālam) retaining the sound masculine plural ending in spite of being treated as a non-human plural; a feature that suggests it existed prior to the restriction of such a use exclusively for male humans; whereas one group renders known Middle Iranian suffixes, as in طَابَق (ṭābaq) and سَاذَج (sāḏaj) and رَامَك (rāmak) and via Aramaic fricativized as in كَامَخ (kāmaḵ) the ending of which became Classical Persian ـه (-a) and ـک (-ak). Nautically, even Dravidian borrowings with this measure like طَالَم (ṭālam) are possible early. Consequently due to its early appearance, the فَاعَل (fāʕal) pattern has since become a sparsely used coined pattern in its own right, typically however still being reserved for loanwords using the structure of these earlier loans as their basis; for example the later loan طَاقَم (ṭāqam).
noun عَالَم · ʕālam · عَالَمُون · عَوَالِم · الْعَالَم
- world
- universe, cosmos, existence
-
world, hereunder, worldly life
فِي ٱلْعَالَمِ سَيَكُونُ لَكُمْ ضِيقٌ، وَلَكِنْ ثِقُوا: أَنَا قَدْ غَلَبْتُ ٱلْعَالَمَ.
Similar: دُنْيَا
- things, creation, that which exists before you
- nation, people, group, type, or kind
عالم²
Where it comes from
Derived from the active participle of the verb عَلِمَ (ʕalima, “to know”), from the root ع ل م (ʕ l m).
noun عَالِم · ʕālim · عَالِمُون · عُلَمَاء · عَالِمَة
- scholar, man of letters, scientist
- knowledgeable person, savant
In English
- world collective/subjective human experience
- alim scholar of Islamic law
- man of letters a literary man
- universe the Universe
- scientist one whose activities make use of the scientific method
- savant a person of learning
- scholar specialist in a particular branch of knowledge
- knowledgeable well informed
Talk about this word "عالم." Wiktionary, via Micwyn, micwyn.com/word/ar/%D8%B9%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85. Accessed 7 Nov. 2026. عالم. (n.d.). In Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Retrieved November 7, 2026, from https://micwyn.com/word/ar/%D8%B9%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85 "عالم." Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Accessed November 7, 2026. https://micwyn.com/word/ar/%D8%B9%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85.Cite this
@misc{micwyn_2026,
title = {عالم},
howpublished = {Wiktionary, via Micwyn},
year = {2026},
url = {https://micwyn.com/word/ar/%D8%B9%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85},
urldate = {2026-11-07}
}
