How to say "to cut" in Arabic
Shifted meaningMeaningto cut
Arabic · Modern Standard Arabic
qaṭaʿaקטע
قطع
Hebrew · Modern Hebrew
khatakhخَاتَاخ
How the two words are related
Same root as a Hebrew word, but the meaning drifted over the centuries.
Arabic root
ق-ط-عHebrew root
ק-ט-עSame root, ق-ط-ع / ק-ט-ע, but the verb narrowed in Hebrew: qaṭaʿa is a general 'to cut' (rope, cloth, anything), while Hebrew's קטע specialized to 'cut off, sever, interrupt' — and lives on mainly as a noun, a segment or clip, exactly what qaṭaʿa produces. Modern Hebrew's everyday 'cut' is חתך, an unrelated root.
Related Hebrew word:קטעkataكَاتَا
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 turns the qāf into a glottal stop: ʾaṭaʿ.
Moroccan · Morocco — Casablanca, Rabat, Fes
Darija keeps the q and drops the vowel: qṭeʿ.
In a phrase
He cut the rope with a knife