How to say "wallet" in Arabic
New wordMeaningwallet
Arabic · Modern Standard Arabic
miḥfaẓaמחפט'ה
محفظة
Hebrew · Modern Hebrew
arnakأَرْنَاك
How the two words are related
No Hebrew relative — learn it fresh.
Arabic root
ح-ف-ظFrom ح-ف-ظ 'to guard, keep, preserve' — the same root behind حَافِظ, someone who has memorized the whole Quran, and مُحَافَظَة, 'governorate' or 'preservation'. A wallet is 'the keeper'. No solid Hebrew cousin here — a case for learning it fresh.
Learn it
On the street
How people actually say it in the spoken dialects, where it differs from the standard word.
Levantine · Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria
A common alternate word for wallet or purse in the Levant and Iraq, from Persian.
Egyptian · Cairo and the Nile Delta
Cairo keeps the MSA word but says it maḥfaẓa.
Moroccan · Morocco — Casablanca, Rabat, Fes
The Darija wallet is a bezṭām.
In a phrase
a leather wallet
Plural
broken plural CaCāCiC — like مِعْطَف→مَعَاطِف