د ع و (d-ʿ-w): Every Word From This Root in the Quran

Quran Root Words > Root d-ʿ-w

The Arabic root د ع و (d-ʿ-w) occurs 212 times in the Quran, in 7 different words, and is number 43 of the Quran's 1,642 roots by frequency. The most frequent word is دَعَا (daʿā), 170 times, followed by دُعَآء (duʿāʾ), 22 times.

What the root d-ʿ-w means

The Quranic Arabic Corpus glosses the root's form I verb دَعَا (daʿā) as "to call, to invite, to pray". Its other verbs are glossed there as follows: يَدَّعُ (yaddaʿu), form VIII, "to call, to ask".

The last letter of d-ʿ-w is the weak letter و. In a root like this, called defective, the last letter often becomes a long vowel or drops away at the end of a word. Compare the root's words دَعَا (daʿā) and دُعَآء (duʿāʾ).

Every word from the root d-ʿ-w in the Quran

The Quran builds 7 different words on d-ʿ-w. The table lists them from most to least frequent, with the spelling the corpus gives each one, its word type, its meaning and its number of occurrences. Verbs make up 173 of the root's 212 occurrences, in forms I and VIII.

Meanings in quotation marks are MASAQ word-by-word glosses, the others the corpus dictionary's, and the word types follow the dictionary. The Arabic is the corpus's, in the Quran's own spelling, so دَعْوَىٰ (daʿwā) keeps its small dagger alif. Every count on this page is a lemma count from the Quranic Arabic Corpus, version 0.4. We compared each of these 7 counts, and the root total of 212, with the corpus's own dictionary entry for d-ʿ-w, and all of them match.

The root d-ʿ-w in the verses of the Quran

Words from d-ʿ-w appear in 182 verses spread over 55 of the Quran's 114 suras. Sura 40 has the most of them, 14 verses. Below are the shortest verses in which the root's most frequent words occur, with the word marked. The text is the Uthmani text of Tanzil, and each reference opens the verse on quran.com with translations.

دَعَا (daʿā), 170 times

فَلْيَدْعُ نَادِيَهُۥ
Quran 96:17; word-by-word gloss of the marked word: "then let him call"

سَنَدْعُ ٱلزَّبَانِيَةَ
Quran 96:18; word-by-word gloss of the marked word: "we will call"

فَسَوْفَ يَدْعُوا۟ ثُبُورًا
Quran 84:11; word-by-word gloss of the marked word: "he will call"

دُعَآء (duʿāʾ), 22 times

فَلَمْ يَزِدْهُمْ دُعَآءِىٓ إِلَّا فِرَارًا
Quran 71:6; word-by-word gloss of the marked word: "my invitation"

رَبِّ ٱجْعَلْنِى مُقِيمَ ٱلصَّلَوٰةِ وَمِن ذُرِّيَّتِى ۚ رَبَّنَا وَتَقَبَّلْ دُعَآءِ
Quran 14:40; word-by-word gloss of the marked word: "my prayer"

دَعْوَة (daʿwa), 6 times

قَالَ قَدْ أُجِيبَت دَّعْوَتُكُمَا فَٱسْتَقِيمَا وَلَا تَتَّبِعَآنِّ سَبِيلَ ٱلَّذِينَ لَا يَعْلَمُونَ
Quran 10:89; word-by-word gloss of the marked word: "(the) invocation of both of you"

وَمِنْ ءَايَٰتِهِۦٓ أَن تَقُومَ ٱلسَّمَآءُ وَٱلْأَرْضُ بِأَمْرِهِۦ ۚ ثُمَّ إِذَا دَعَاكُمْ دَعْوَةً مِّنَ ٱلْأَرْضِ إِذَآ أَنتُمْ تَخْرُجُونَ
Quran 30:25; word-by-word gloss of the marked word: "(with) a call"

Learning the words of d-ʿ-w

دَعَا (daʿā), no. 61 with 170, is on our list of the 100 most common Quran words, which counts it the same way. Its verbs follow the patterns of the Arabic verb forms (forms I and VIII), and our Arabic verb conjugator conjugates any root in any form, so you can see how دَعَا changes for person and tense. Our full conjugation of daʿā sets out every person and tense of دَعَا. The root d-ʿ-w is one of the 1,642 roots you can search in our Quran root word explorer; for the rest of the language, see our Arabic learning resources by level.

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