arabictyper
The word
كاتِب

katib

writer, author, copyist
Arabicكاتِب
Arabizikatib
Translationwriter, author, copyist
TypeNoun
Audio
MSA audio
Letter by letter

The word, broken down.

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

01
Letter
ك
kāf
k

A plain 'k'.

Type:;
02
Letter
ا
alif
ā

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

Type:H
03
Letter
ت
tāʾ
t

A plain 't'. The same body as bāʾ, but with two dots above.

Type:J
04
Diacritic
ـِ
kasra
i

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

Type:Shift+A
05
Letter
ب
bāʾ
b

A plain 'b'. A tooth-shaped body with one dot below.

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

What does katib mean in Arabizi?

katib is how you write كاتِب in Arabizi, the Arabic chat alphabet. It means “writer, author, copyist”. 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 — 5 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. 01;ك
  2. 02Hا
  3. 03Jت
  4. 04Shift+Aـِkasra
  5. 05Fب
Composedكاتِب
The full set

Feminine and plural forms.

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

FormArabicArabiziUse
Masculine · currentكاتِبkatibthe base form, for a masculine subject
Feminineكاتِبةkatibafor a feminine subject
Pluralكاتِبونkatibunfor three or more
كاتِب
Practice

Type كاتِب 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.