In the previous post, I explained (اسم المكان) “noun of place”. In this post, I explain (اسم الزمان) “noun of time”, which is a noun that indicates the time of an action, e.g. (موعد) “appointment”, (مولد) “birthday”. It is formed in the same way that we form the noun of place, i.e. by following the patterns (مفعل) and (مفعلة).

It is interesting to note that there are some words that serve both as noun of time and noun of place, e.g. (مشرق) “sunrise” both place and time of sunrise”, and (مغرب) “sunset” both the place and time of sunset.

The noun of time and noun of place can also be formed from some nouns, e.g. from (صيف) “summer”, we can have (مصيف) which means “summer resort. Both forms can also be formed from verbs other than form I, i.e. verbs that have more than 3 letters. They can be formed by making the present and replacing the first letter with (م) and putting a fatha (ـَ) “short a” on the letter before last, e.g. from (اختبر) “test”, we can have (مُختبَر) which means “laboratory”, and from (التقى) “meet”, we can have (مُلتقَى) which means “time and place of meeting” or “forum”.