ي.
-ī · -iya · -iyy · -ya · yāʔ
The twenty-eighth and last letter of the Arabic alphabet, written in the Arabic script; preceded by و (w).
Meaning & usage
The twenty-eighth and last letter of the Arabic alphabet, written in the Arabic script; preceded by و (w).
Where this word comes from
From the Nabataean letter 𐢍 (l, “yodh”), derived from the Phoenician letter 𐤉 (l, “yodh”), from the Egyptian hieroglyph 𓂝. See also Classical Syriac ܝ (l, “yodh”), Hebrew י (l, “yodh”), Ancient Greek Ι (I), Latin I and Latin J.
The nisba suffix, an extremely productive suffix used to derive adjectives (with the meaning “related to ...”) or nouns (with the meaning “person related to ...”) from other nouns
فَنّ (fann, “art”) + ي (y) → فَنِّيّ (fanniyy, “artistic, artist”)
عِرَاق (ʕirāq, “Iraq”) + ي (y) → عِرَاقِيّ (ʕirāqiyy, “Iraqi, an Iraqi”)
Where this word comes from
Etymology tree Proto-Afroasiatic Proto-Semitic Arabic ي Compare Akkadian -ī, Biblical Hebrew ־ִי (-i) and Egyptian -j.
bound object pronoun: me, my
لِـ (li-, “to”) + ـِي (-ī) → لِي (lī, “to me”)
Where this word comes from
Inherited from Proto-Semitic *-ī and/or Proto-Semitic *-ya, from Proto-Afroasiatic *yi (“me”). Compare Biblical Hebrew ־ִי (-i).
The tenth numeral symbol of the Arabic alphabet (traditional abjad order, used for list numbering), written in the Arabic script; preceded by ط (ṭ) and followed by ك (k).
Where this word comes from
From the Nabataean letter 𐢍 (l, “yodh”), derived from the Phoenician letter 𐤉 (l, “yodh”), from the Egyptian hieroglyph 𓂝. See also Classical Syriac ܝ (l, “yodh”), Hebrew י (l, “yodh”), Ancient Greek Ι (I), Latin I and Latin J.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.