How to say "scissors" in Arabic
CognateMeaningscissors
Arabic · Modern Standard Arabic
miqaṣṣמקצ
مقص
Hebrew · Modern Hebrew
misparayimمِسْپَارَايِم
How the two words are related
Same Semitic root, same meaning — you already know this word.
Arabic root
ق-ص-صHebrew root
ק-צ-ץHebrew's word for scissors, מספריים, is unrelated (it comes from ס-פ-ר in its haircutting sense, as in סַפָּר 'barber'). But Arabic's root ق-ص-ص matches Hebrew קצץ letter for letter (ק↔ق, צ↔ص) with the meaning intact on both sides — 'to snip, chop off' — so a miqaṣṣ is transparently 'the chopping-thing,' a true cognate root even though the two languages settled on different words for the tool itself.
Related Hebrew word:קצץkatsatsكَاتْسَاتْس
Learn it
On the street
How people actually say it in the spoken dialects, where it differs from the standard word.
Egyptian · Cairo and the Nile Delta
Cairo says maʾaṣṣ, with the qāf as a glottal stop.
Moroccan · Morocco — Casablanca, Rabat, Fes
Darija keeps the q and drops the first vowel: mqeṣṣ.
In a phrase
He cut the paper with scissors.
Plural
sound plural -āt