The verbal noun (الْمَصْدَرُ ) is a basic grammatical concept in Arabic which is similar to the gerund or infinitive in English. This part of speech has various functions in Arabic. It is a noun that expresses the abstract action of a verb. Each verb in Arabic has a verbal noun that denotes the action of the verb in general terms, without reference to time or place.
For example, to express that you perform the act of reading habitually in a time frame specified by the day, you can say:
أَقْرأُ
كُلُّ
يَوْمٍ
I read every day.
On the other hand, to express that you performed the act of reading at a particular time the previous day, you can say:
قَرَأْتُ
كِتابًا
أَمْسِ
I read a book yesterday.
However, to express that you like the act of reading in general, you would use the verbal noun, الْقِراءةُ:
أُحِبُّ
الْقِراءةَ
I like reading.
Verbal nouns are almost always definite. They either appear with the definite article أَلْ, or as the first term in an Idafa, or with an attached pronoun suffix.
Each verb has its own verbal noun, produced in accordance with its specific pattern.
See also: