أَلْفٌ thousand in Arabic
أَلْفٌ is how you say “thousand” in Arabic.
Root ا ل ف ʾ-l-f. noun (numeral). alf.
Arabic
English
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Meaning of thousand in Arabic
- one thousand (1000) a cardinal number used to count items, e.g. a thousand camels or dirhams
Example sentence
كل ليلة ينزل سبعون ألف ملك من السماء إلى الأرض إلى مسجد بيت المقدس
Every night, seventy thousand angels descend from the sky to the earth, to the mosque of Bayt al-Maqdis.
أَلْفَ thousand
alf means 'thousand'; the '-a' ending — counted with 'seventy'.
The English is machine-translated.
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How it is used
أَلْف is the plain classical and modern numeral for "thousand", attested in Lane's as a distinct sense of the root alongside the far more common family of words built on "keeping to" and "becoming familiar".
Words from the same root
- إِلْفٌ a familiar friend, close companion
- أُلْفَةٌ familiarity, intimacy, companionship
- مُؤَلِّفٌ an author, a compiler
- مُؤَلَّفٌ a composed work, a book
- مَأْلُوفٌ familiar, customary, usual
Common questions
- How do you say "thousand" in Arabic?
- أَلْف (alf).
- Are أَلْف (thousand) and إِلْف (a familiar friend) related?
- They share the root ا ل ف, but Lane's treats them as distinct senses: أَلْف as the numeral, and إِلْف and its family from the sense of keeping to something and becoming familiar with it.
Related words
Definitions summarised from Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon (E. W. Lane, 1863–1893).