Free online guide
Small words in the Quran
The same small word can mean different things in different ayahs. Pick a word to see its jobs, the clue that tells them apart, and real ayahs, then drill it.
About the guide
Where do the jobs come from?
Each small word's jobs come from the Quranic Arabic Corpus, which tags every piece of every word in the Quran by what it does. For a few words (bi, min and ʿalā) the corpus only says "preposition", so the guide shows how the English word-by-word translation renders them instead. The Arabic and the English are the same as in the Quran word meaning test: Indo-Pak script and the QUL word-by-word translation.
Why is my favourite meaning not first?
Jobs are listed by how often they occur in the Quran, counted from the corpus. The job a textbook teaches first is often the rarer one here: mā means "that which" about twice as often as it means "not".
Is my progress saved?
Your best drill score for each word is kept in this browser only. Nothing is sent to a server and there is no account.
It can still get things wrong
The jobs were matched to the ayahs by script, with AI assistance, and every example's English was checked against its job. Some of the sorting rules are simple, so an odd example can slip through. If one looks wrong, please tell us.