يَفْلِيstroke

Example sentences

• وَأَمَّا حَارِثَةُ فَإِنَّهُ كَانَ يَفْلِي رَأْسَ أُمِّهِ

  As for Haritha, he used to stroke his mother's head.

  يَفْلِي — he strokes. A present-tense verb with a built-in 'he' subject. Standing under the 'used to' verb before it, this present is pulled into a habitual past: not 'he strokes' now but 'he used to stroke', a customary act. So its present form supplies the action while the earlier verb supplies the repeated-past timing.

  From: Mothers and the Companions →