طِفْلchild

Example sentences

• أَلا تَرَى أَنَّ الطِّفْلَ يُؤْثِرُ مَا يَهْوَى وَإِنْ أَدَّاهُ إِلَى التَّلَفِ

  Do you not see that a child prefers what he desires, even if it leads to his ruin?

  الطِّفْلَ — child. The subject of the reported clause, yet wearing the accusative ending because the 'that' before it governs the noun that follows — a quirk of this connector.

  From: The Discipline of Foresight →

• غير أنه زينها وطفل الهوى ذو اغترار،

  Yet, He adorned it, and the child of desire is prone to deception,

  وَطِفْلُ — and the child. The leading 'and' is a connector that ties this new statement onto the previous one and keeps both on the same grammatical footing. The noun itself is the first half of a possessive pairing: it is left bare of 'the' precisely because it draws its definiteness from the owning word that follows, which is how Arabic builds 'the X of Y' by placing the two nouns side by side.

  From: Preferring the Hereafter →