Intensive adjectives (فَعُول)

In Arabic, when you want to emphasize that someone possesses a certain trait to an extreme degree, or does an action habitually, you use an Intensive Adjective (صيغة مبالغة).

The (فَعُول) Pattern

One of the most common patterns for intensive adjectives is فَعُول. To form it, take a three-letter root and insert a و before the final root letter. The first letter takes a fatḥa (a) and the second takes a ḍamma (u).

For example, from the root for patience (ص-ب-ر), we get the adjective for someone who is exceedingly patient:

Adjective Agreement

Just like regular adjectives, words on the فَعُول pattern must agree with the noun they describe.

• Gender: Add the feminine ending (ة) when describing a female character.
• Definiteness: Add (ال) if the adjective is directly modifying a definite noun (e.g., "the patient girl"), but leave it off if it is the predicate of a sentence (e.g., "the hero is patient").

These intensive adjectives are heavily used in storytelling to describe the larger-than-life character archetypes found in traditional folktales. Notice how the adjectives adapt to match their nouns in the examples below: