Grammar term · Sarf · morphology
جَمْع تَكْسِير
jam' taksir
Broken plural
Sarf · morphologyNumber & plural typecore term3,133+ in the Qur'an
Also written: Jam' · Broken plural · Sound plural · Plurals
In one line
The broken plural: the singular's shape is smashed and recast — رَجُل becomes رِجَال — with no fixed ending to memorise.
Classical definition
جَمْعُ التَّكْسِيرِ مَا دَلَّ عَلَى أَكْثَرَ مِنَ اثْنَيْنِ مَعَ تَغْيِيرٍ فِي بِنَاءِ مُفْرَدِهِ، كَرِجَالٍ وَكُتُبٍ.
“The broken plural is what indicates more than two with a change in the structure of its singular, like rijal and kutub.”
(بتصرف من شذا العرف)
Key words in the Arabic
تَكْسِيرbreaking
تَغْيِير فِي بِنَاءِ مُفْرَدِهِa change in its singular's build
Understand it
Where the sound plurals bolt an ending onto an intact singular, taksir reaches inside and rearranges the letters' vowels — كِتَاب to كُتُب, رَجُل to رِجَال, مَسْجِد to مَسَاجِد. The patterns are many and learned by exposure, not by rule; the dictionary habit of noting every plural exists for this reason. Grammatically it declines with the ordinary three vowels — except the grand patterns like مَسَاجِد, which cross into muntaha al-jumu' and lose their tanwin.
How to spot it
Recognition test
A plural whose singular cannot be recovered by deleting an ending: if you must re-arrange vowels or letters to find the singular, it is taksir.
In the Qur'an
فِيهَا كُتُبٌ قَيِّمَةٌ
Al-Bayyina 98:3 — “containing upright writings”
كُتُبٌ is كِتَاب broken and recast — a taksir plural declining with ordinary vowels.
Forms it takes
للكثرةللقلةمشتق
Related terms
الجَمْع · al-jam'
صِيغَة مُنْتَهَى الْجُمُوع · sighat muntaha al-jumu'
جَمْع مُذَكَّر سَالِم · jam' mudhakkar salim
جَمْع مُؤَنَّث سَالِم · jam' mu'annath salim
الْمُفْرَد · al-mufrad
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From the free course The Language of Quran — Easier than English (Book 1) (LoQ1), taught by Ustad Muhammad Arjan Ali.