arabictyper
The word
رابِع

rabi3

fourth
Arabicرابِع
Arabizirabi3
Translationfourth
TypeAdjective
Rootر ب ع
Audio
MSA audio
Letter by letter

The word, broken down.

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

01
Letter
ر
rāʾ
r

A rolled 'r', closer to Spanish than English.

Type:V
02
Letter
ا
alif
ā

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

Type:H
03
Letter
ب
bāʾ
b

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

Type:F
04
Diacritic
ـِ
kasra
i

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

Type:Shift+A
05
Letter
ع
ʿayn
ʿ

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

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

What does rabi3 mean in Arabizi?

rabi3 is how you write رابِع in Arabizi, the Arabic chat alphabet. It means “fourth”.

The number in rabi3
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 — 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. 01Vر
  2. 02Hا
  3. 03Fب
  4. 04Shift+Aـِkasra
  5. 05Uع
Composedرابِع
The full set

Feminine and plural forms.

Arabic words change with gender and number. Here’s the full set for rabi3:

FormArabicArabiziUse
Masculine · currentرابِعrabi3the base form, for a masculine subject
Feminineرابِعةrabi3afor a feminine subject
رابِع
Practice

Type رابِع 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.