و ق ي (w-q-y): Every Word From This Root in the Quran

Quran Root Words > Root w-q-y

The Arabic root و ق ي (w-q-y) occurs 258 times in the Quran, in 8 different words, and is number 36 of the Quran's 1,642 roots by frequency. The most frequent word is ٱتَّقَىٰ (ittaqā), 166 times, followed by مُتَّقِين (muttaqīn), 49 times.

What the root w-q-y means

The Quranic Arabic Corpus glosses the root's form I verb وَقَىٰ (waqā) as "to save, to protect". Its other verbs are glossed there as follows: ٱتَّقَىٰ (ittaqā), form VIII, "to be righteous, to fear (Allah)".

The last letter of w-q-y is the weak letter ي. 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 ٱتَّقَىٰ (ittaqā) and مُتَّقِين (muttaqīn).

The first letter of w-q-y is the weak letter و. In a root like this, called assimilated, the first letter drops out of the present tense of many form I verbs and merges into the t of form VIII. Compare the root's words ٱتَّقَىٰ (ittaqā) and تَقْوَى (taqwā).

Every word from the root w-q-y in the Quran

The Quran builds 8 different words on w-q-y. 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 182 of the root's 258 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 ٱتَّقَىٰ (ittaqā) 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 8 counts, and the root total of 258, with the corpus's own dictionary entry for w-q-y, and all of them match.

The root w-q-y in the verses of the Quran

Words from w-q-y appear in 237 verses spread over 63 of the Quran's 114 suras. Sura 2 has the most of them, 32 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.

ٱتَّقَىٰ (ittaqā), 166 times

فَأَمَّا مَنْ أَعْطَىٰ وَٱتَّقَىٰ
Quran 92:5; word-by-word gloss of the marked word: "and fears"

فَٱتَّقُوا۟ ٱللَّهَ وَأَطِيعُونِ
Quran 26:108; word-by-word gloss of the marked word: "so fear"

وَٱتَّقُوا۟ ٱللَّهَ وَلَا تُخْزُونِ
Quran 15:69; word-by-word gloss of the marked word: "and fear"

مُتَّقِين (muttaqīn), 49 times

إِنَّ لِلْمُتَّقِينَ مَفَازًا
Quran 78:31; word-by-word gloss of the marked word: "for the righteous"

وَأُزْلِفَتِ ٱلْجَنَّةُ لِلْمُتَّقِينَ
Quran 26:90; word-by-word gloss of the marked word: "for the righteous"

تَقْوَى (taqwā), 17 times

أَوْ أَمَرَ بِٱلتَّقْوَىٰٓ
Quran 96:12; word-by-word gloss of the marked word: "[of the] righteousness"

فَأَلْهَمَهَا فُجُورَهَا وَتَقْوَىٰهَا
Quran 91:8; word-by-word gloss of the marked word: "and its righteousness"

Learning the words of w-q-y

ٱتَّقَىٰ (ittaqā), no. 62 with 166, 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 ٱتَّقَىٰ changes for person and tense. The root w-q-y 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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