ABSTRACT
A maSdar or “verbal noun,” as the English translation indicates, is a noun that
names the activity of a verb. MaSdars are roughly equivalent to gerunds in
English grammar. These are nouns that end with “-ing” such as “swimming,”
“eating,” or nouns that end with other morphological elements, derived from
verbs such as “arrival,” from the verb “to arrive,” or “application,” from the
verb “to apply.” A single verb may have two or more maSdars in Arabic, some-
times with nuanced differences in meaning.
