arabictyper
The word
أَخْفى

akhfa

to hide, better hidden or concealed, to conceal
Arabicأَخْفى
Arabiziakhfa
Translationto hide, better hidden or concealed, to conceal
TypeVerb
Audio
MSA audio
Letter by letter

The word, broken down.

أَخْفى reads right to left. Below, each letter in reading order, with its sound and the keys that type it.

01
Letter
أ
hamza on alif
ʾa

A glottal stop carried on an alif.

Type:Shift+H
02
Diacritic
ـَ
fatḥa
a

A short 'a', written as a small stroke above the letter.

Type:Shift+Q
03
Letter
خ
khāʾ
kh

The throaty 'kh', like the 'ch' in Bach or the Scottish 'loch'.

Type:O
04
Letter
ف
fāʾ
f

A plain 'f'. One dot above a small loop.

Type:T
05
Letter
ى
alif maqṣūra
ā

A dotless yāʾ that sounds like a long 'a'; only ever at a word's end.

Type:N
← First letter shown leftmost; the actual word is read right-to-left in script.
Arabizi

What does akhfa mean in Arabizi?

akhfa is how you write أَخْفى in Arabizi, the Arabic chat alphabet. It means “to hide, better hidden or concealed, to conceal”. No numbers in this one; it spells out in plain Latin letters.

New to the chat alphabet? See how every letter and number maps: the Arabizi → Arabic guide. Got it the other way round, with Arabic script to convert? That is the Arabic to Arabizi converter.

How to type it

The keystrokes, in order.

On a standard Arabic 101 / Arabic-PC layout — 6 key presses. Diacritics sit on the Shift keys. The on-screen keyboard on this site highlights each key as you go.

Want the keys under your fingers first? The mixed session on our Arabic typing practice page runs through words from every set.

Open the typing practice →
Sequence
  1. 01Shift+Hأ
  2. 02Shift+Qـَfatḥa
  3. 03Oخ
  4. 04Shift+Xـْ
  5. 05Tف
  6. 06Nى
Composedأَخْفى
The full set

Feminine and plural forms.

Arabic words change with gender and number. Here’s the full set for akhfa:

FormArabicArabiziUse
Masculine · currentأَخْفىakhfathe base form, for a masculine subject
Feminineخُفْياkhufyafor a feminine subject
Pluralأَخْفَوْنakhfawnfor three or more
أَخْفى
Practice

Type أَخْفى until your fingers know it.

Or take it to the online Arabic keyboard and type it freely. Sessions run inside our free Arabic typing practice tool.

Start a practice sessionOpen the Arabic keyboard

The definition is adapted from the Wiktionary entry, whose contributors publish it under CC BY-SA 4.0. The frequency rank counts how often the word appears in film and TV subtitles (OpenSubtitles, via Hermit Dave’s FrequencyWords). More on the acknowledgements page.