Grammar term · Sarf · morphology
جَامِد
jamid
Primitive / non-derived
Sarf · morphologyDerivation statuscore term24,008+ in the Qur'an
In one line
The frozen word: not taken from anything else — رَجُل، أَسَد، مَاء simply are what they are.
Classical definition
الجَامِدُ مَا لَمْ يُؤْخَذْ مِنْ غَيْرِهِ، كَأَسْمَاءِ الأَجْنَاسِ وَالمَصَادِرِ الأَصْلِيَّةِ.
“The jamid is what is not taken from anything else, like nouns of kinds and the original masdars.”
(بتصرف من شذا العرف)
Key words in the Arabic
جَامِدfrozen, underived
أَسْمَاء الْأَجْنَاسnouns of kinds — man, water, lion
Understand it
Sarf splits all words into two families: the frozen and the derived. A jamid points at its meaning directly — مَاء names water without being manufactured from some other word — while a mushtaqq like كَاتِب is visibly built (from كَتَبَ, 'one who writes'). The masdar sits at the family border: itself counted jamid by the Basran view, yet the quarry every mushtaqq is cut from.
How to spot it
Recognition test
Ask: is this word built on a verb's root with a recognisable pattern (فَاعِل، مَفْعُول، مِفْعَال…)? No pattern, no source verb — jamid.
In the Qur'an
وَأَنزَلَ مِنَ ٱلسَّمَآءِ مَآءً
Al-Baqarah 2:22 — “and sent down rain from the sky”
مَآءً — a noun of kind: nothing derived it, nothing derives from its shape directly — jamid.
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