صِغَرhardship

Example sentences

• والبنين وكم صغر قاسى الأب لأجل الصغار، فلما ترقوا فعقوا والعقوق من الذنوب الكبار،

  And the children, how much hardship the father endures for the sake of the young; but when they grow up, they disobey, and disobedience is among the grave sins,

  صِغَرٍ — smallness/youth. This indefinite singular noun is what the exclamatory 'how much' counts, and that construction requires exactly this singular genitive shape after it. So the form is dictated by the 'how much' before it, conveying 'how much hardship', even though English would expect a plural.

  From: Preferring the Hereafter →

• وَكَمْ صِغَرٍ قَاسَى الأَبُ لِأَجَلِّ الصِّغَارِ،

  And how often the father endured hardship for the little ones,

  صِغَرٍ — small ones. A noun governed by the 'how often' word before it, naming the little ones for whose sake the hardship was borne. After such an exclamative-quantity word the following noun takes a fixed singular shape even when the sense is plural, which is why it reads as a group despite its form. It anchors what the toil was about.

  From: This World Is Short →