What is a word (kalimah)?

In one line

Definition

Understand it

In English there are eight parts of speech. In Arabic there are only three.

A كَلِمَة (kalimah) is a single meaningful word. It is the smallest thing grammar works with: join two or more of them and you no longer have a kalimah, you have a مُرَكَّب (murakkab), a construct.

Every kalimah is one of three: an اِسْم (ism), a فِعْل (fi'l) or a حَرْف (harf). The three types of words takes each one in turn.

Types of Murakkab

A murakkab — a grammatical construct — is one of two: tam, complete, or naqis, incomplete.

The word كِتَابٌ (kitabun) is a kalimah. It is one word, and it carries its own meaning. But كِتَابُ زَيْدٍ (kitabu zaydin) is not one word. It is كِتَاب, “book”, joined to زَيْد, a man's name. Together they say something neither says on its own — “Zayd's book”. That is a مُرَكَّب (murakkab).

How to spot it

In the Qur'an

In the language — فِي اللُّغَة

Arabic grammar terms are coined from the Arabic language. In most cases the word already had a meaning and a use in ordinary speech, and the grammarians then gave it one precise technical sense.

In everyday Arabic, كَلِمَة (kalimah) means a speech or a statement.

أَلْقَى الْخَطِيبُ كَلِمَةً (alqa al-khatibu kalimatan) — “the speaker delivered an address”

Used in that linguistic sense it can cover a single word, a phrase, or a whole statement.

In Arabic grammar it means specifically a single meaningful word — one whose parts do not each carry a part of its meaning.

Common questions

Is a kalimah the same as a word in English?

Close enough to begin with, but not identical. Arabic counts a preposition as a kalimah in its own right even when it is written joined to the word after it — so a single written form on the page can be two kalimahs to the grammarian.