Quran Root Words > Root y-w-m
The Arabic root ي و م (y-w-m) occurs 405 times in the Quran, and every one of those occurrences is the same word: يَوْم (yawm). It is number 14 of the 1,642 roots in the Quranic Arabic Corpus by frequency.
What the root y-w-m means
The corpus dictionary gives no gloss for this root's words, so the meaning here comes from the word-by-word glosses of the MASAQ dataset, which most often render يَوْم (yawm) as "day".
The middle letter of y-w-m is the weak letter و. In a root like this, called hollow, the middle letter is often not written as a consonant and turns into a long vowel instead. The Quran's only word from this root is يَوْم (yawm).
Every word from the root y-w-m in the Quran
The Quran uses one word from y-w-m. The table gives its spelling as the corpus writes it, its type, its meaning and its count. The Quran uses no verb from y-w-m: all 405 occurrences are nouns, adjectives or participles.
| Arabic | Transliteration | Word type | Meaning | Occurrences |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| يَوْم | yawm | Nominal | "day" | 405 |
| ي و م | y-w-m | All words from y-w-m | 405 |
Meanings in quotation marks are MASAQ word-by-word glosses, the others the corpus dictionary's, and the word types follow the dictionary. Every count on this page is a lemma count from the Quranic Arabic Corpus, version 0.4. We compared this count, the root total of 405, with the corpus's own dictionary entry for y-w-m, and it matches.
The root y-w-m in the verses of the Quran
Words from y-w-m appear in 377 verses spread over 75 of the Quran's 114 suras. Sura 2 has the most of them, 22 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.
يَوْم (yawm), 405 times
لِيَوْمِ ٱلْفَصْلِ
Quran 77:13; word-by-word gloss of the marked word: "for (the) day"
لِيَوْمٍ عَظِيمٍ
Quran 83:5; word-by-word gloss of the marked word: "for a day"
مَٰلِكِ يَوْمِ ٱلدِّينِ
Quran 1:4; word-by-word gloss of the marked word: "(of the) day"
Learning the words of y-w-m
Our list of the 100 most common Quran words gives يَوْم 475 occurrences. That count adds the 70 occurrences of يَوْمَئِذٍ (yawmaʾidhin, on that day), which the corpus files as a separate word with no root, so they are not counted here. The root y-w-m 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.
Frequently asked questions
How many times is the root y-w-m used in the Quran?
405 times, always as the same word, يَوْم (yawm), according to the Quranic Arabic Corpus.
What does the Arabic root ي و م (y-w-m) mean?
The corpus dictionary gives no gloss for this root's words, so the meaning here comes from the word-by-word glosses of the MASAQ dataset, which most often render يَوْم (yawm) as "day". The root gives the Quran one word only.
Does the Quran use a verb from the root y-w-m?
No. All 405 occurrences of y-w-m in the Quran are nouns, adjectives or participles; the most frequent is يَوْم (yawm).