ثَلَاث three in Arabic
ثَلَاث is how you say “three” in Arabic.
Root ث ل ث ṯ-l-ṯ. numeral (cardinal number 'three'). ṯalāṯ.
Arabic
English
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Meaning of three in Arabic
- three (the cardinal number 3) Base numeral form; the root's verbs describe the same idea in action, e.g. 'he made a group three' or 'he became the third of them.'
Example sentence
فمذهب مالك من ترك من ذلك ثلاثاً عمداً أعاد الصلاة،
According to Malik's school of thought, whoever intentionally omits three of these must repeat the prayer,
ثَلَاثًا three
'three', accusative — the count of what is omitted; the counted noun is understood.
The English is machine-translated.
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How it is used
Used as the cardinal number three, placed before the counted noun. The root's verb forms trace the same idea of 'threeness': ثَلَثَ القَوْمَ means either 'he took a third of the people's property' or 'he became the third of the group, making them three with himself,' and the same pattern extends to other numbers (making a pair a trio, a group of twenty-nine into thirty, and so on).
Words from the same root
- ثَلَثَ to take a third of (property); to be, or become, the third of a group, making it three
- ثلّث to make (something) three, or triple it; later also 'to assert the doctrine of the Trinity'
- اثلث for a group to become three (or thirty); for a she-camel to bear her third offspring
- ثِلْثٌ the third-born offspring of a she-camel; also, watering palm trees once every three days
- ثَلَاثَةٌ three (counterpart form of the numeral)
- ثَلَاثُونَ thirty
More example sentences
فيقول لهم إن ربي غضب اليوم غضباً لم يغضب قبله مثله، ولن يغضب بعده مثله، وإني كنت كذبت ثلاث كذبات، نفسي نفسي نفسي، اذهبوا إلى غيري،
He will say to them: "My Lord has become angry today with an anger like none before or after. Indeed, I told three lies. Myself, myself, myself! Go to someone else."
ثَلَاثَ three
A number-word heading a counted phrase: it stands first and puts the thing counted after it into the form that count demands, so 'three' governs 'lies'. Arabic ties number and noun in a fixed grammatical pairing.
فمذهب مالك من ترك من ذلك ثلاثاً عمداً أعاد الصلاة،
Malik's view is that if three of those actions are left intentionally, the prayer must be repeated.
ثَلَاثًا three
This is a number, 'three', in the accusative because it counts how many of the acts are left, functioning as the object of the leaving. Arabic puts such a counted amount in the accusative, so the ending itself signals 'three of them' as the quantity dropped.
Common questions
- How do you say "three" in Arabic?
- ثَلَاث (ṯalāṯ).
- What root does ثَلَاث come from, and what does it cover?
- It comes from the root ث ل ث (ṯ-l-ṯ), which underlies the whole family of 'three'-related words — the numeral itself, verbs meaning 'to make/become three,' and words for 'a third' or 'third-born.'
Related words
Definitions summarised from Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon (E. W. Lane, 1863–1893).