Lesson 14 of 16 · The patterns behind the words
One root, ten shapes
أَوْزَان الْفِعْل
After this lesson: See how a root's meaning shifts when it is poured into a different pattern.
Nearly every Arabic word is built from three letters carrying a core idea. ʿ-l-m carries knowing. Poured into different patterns, those same three letters give ʿalima (he knew), ʿallama (he taught — that is, he caused knowing), aʿlama (he informed), taʿallama (he learned for himself), and istaʿlama (he sought knowledge). ʿilm is knowledge, ʿālim a scholar, maʿlūm a known thing.
Grammarians number ten of these patterns, Form I to Form X. You do not need the numbers to benefit. What you need is the habit of asking: what are the three letters here, and what has the pattern done to them?
Form II — doubling the middle letter — usually means causing or doing intensively. That single fact unlocks a great many Qur'anic verbs: ʿallama, nazzala, sabbaḥa, kabbara.
In the Qur'an
ٱلرَّحْمَـٰنُ · عَلَّمَ ٱلْقُرْءَانَ
ar-raḥmān · ʿallama l-qurʾān
The Most Merciful. He taught the Qur'an.
Notice. ʿallama, with its doubled middle letter: not merely knew, but caused to be known.
عَلَّمَ ٱلْإِنسَـٰنَ مَا لَمْ يَعْلَمْ
ʿallama l-insāna mā lam yaʿlam
He taught man what he did not know.
Notice. Both patterns in one āyah: ʿallama (taught) and yaʿlam (knows), from the same three letters.
Watch out. For the complete list of every word in the Qur'an built on a root, with its pattern and count, use the Corpus dictionary link on any root card in a sūrah's Words tab.
Check yourself
Nothing is scored or saved here — answering is how the rule sticks. When you want a score, the same checks are drilled to mastery below.
What does doubling the middle letter (Form II) usually add?
ʿilm, ʿālim, maʿlūm and yaʿlam share what?
Word morphology, grammar and syntax trees are shown by the Quranic Arabic Corpus (corpus.quran.com), the annotated linguistic resource developed at the University of Leeds.