arabictyper
The word
خافَ

khafa

to fear, to be afraid of
Arabicخافَ
Arabizikhafa
Translationto fear, to be afraid of
TypeVerb
Rootخ و ف
Audio
MSA audio
Letter by letter

The word, broken down.

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

01
Letter
خ
khāʾ
kh

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

Type:O
02
Letter
ا
alif
ā

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

Type:H
03
Letter
ف
fāʾ
f

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

Type:T
04
Diacritic
ـَ
fatḥa
a

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

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

What does khafa mean in Arabizi?

khafa is how you write خافَ in Arabizi, the Arabic chat alphabet. It means “to fear, to be afraid of”. 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 — 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. 01Oخ
  2. 02Hا
  3. 03Tف
  4. 04Shift+Qـَfatḥa
Composedخافَ
خافَ
Practice

Type خافَ 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.