The active participle (اسم الفاعِل) is a very common and a very important form in Arabic. It is used a lot in both Standard and Colloquial Arabic, but it is used more extensively in colloquial dialects. It refers to the doer of the action of to one involved in the action, e.g. the active participle of the verb ‘work’ has the meaning of ‘worker’ and/or ‘working’.

Verbs that are made up of 3 letters have the active participle following the pattern (فاعِل). The following table gives some examples:

Active participles can be masculine, feminine, singular, dual, plural, definite or indefinite, etc.

لاعِب، لاعِبة، لاعِبان، لاعِبتان، لاعِبون، لاعِبات، اللاعِب

Verbs that have vowels in them have special cases for making active participle,

e.g. verbs that have a long /a/ in the middle, e.g. (نام) to sleep follow the same pattern the follows:

Verbs that begin with a long /a/, e.g. (أكل) to eat follow the same pattern the follows: