i3tiqal
arrest, apprehensionThe word, broken down.
اِعْتِقال reads right to left. Below, each letter in reading order, with its sound and the keys that type it.
A long 'a' vowel. A single upright stroke, and the first letter of the alphabet.
A short 'i', written as a small stroke below the letter.
A voiced sound from deep in the throat. Arabizi writes it '3'.
A plain 't'. The same body as bāʾ, but with two dots above.
A short 'i', written as a small stroke below the letter.
A deep 'k', made far back in the throat.
A long 'a' vowel. A single upright stroke, and the first letter of the alphabet.
A plain 'l'. A tall upright stroke with a curved foot.
What does i3tiqal mean in Arabizi?
i3tiqal is how you write اِعْتِقال in Arabizi, the Arabic chat alphabet. It means “arrest, apprehension”.
The 3 stands for ع (ayn): a throaty sound. No clean English equivalent. 3 is a mirrored ع.
For the rest of the chat alphabet, see the Arabizi → Arabic guide. Got it the other way round, with Arabic script to convert? That is the Arabic to Arabizi converter.
The keystrokes, in order.
On a standard Arabic 101 / Arabic-PC layout — 9 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 →- 01H→ا
- 02Shift+A→ـِkasra
- 03U→ع
- 04Shift+X→ـْ
- 05J→ت
- 06Shift+A→ـِkasra
- 07R→ق
- 08H→ا
- 09G→ل
Feminine and plural forms.
Arabic words change with gender and number. Here’s the full set for i3tiqal:
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.