arabictyper
The word
عامّ

3amm

public, prevalent, universal
Arabicعامّ
Arabizi3amm
Translationpublic, prevalent, universal
TypeAdjective
Rootع م م
Audio
MSA audio
Letter by letter

The word, broken down.

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

01
Letter
ع
ʿayn
ʿ

A voiced sound from deep in the throat. Arabizi writes it '3'.

Type:U
02
Letter
ا
alif
ā

A long 'a' vowel. A single upright stroke, and the first letter of the alphabet.

Type:H
03
Letter
م
mīm
m

A plain 'm'. A small round head with a tail.

Type:L
04
Diacritic
ـّ
shadda
double

Doubles the letter it sits on; hold the consonant a beat longer.

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

What does 3amm mean in Arabizi?

3amm is how you write عامّ in Arabizi, the Arabic chat alphabet. It means “public, prevalent, universal”.

The number in 3amm
3ع

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.

How to type it

The keystrokes, in order.

On a standard Arabic 101 / Arabic-PC layout — 4 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. 01Uع
  2. 02Hا
  3. 03Lم
  4. 04Shift+`ـّshadda
Composedعامّ
The full set

Feminine and plural forms.

Arabic words change with gender and number. Here’s the full set for 3amm:

FormArabicArabiziUse
Masculine · currentعامّ3ammthe base form, for a masculine subject
Feminineعامّة3ammafor a feminine subject
عامّ
Practice

Type عامّ 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.