Word.ws English Dictionary

qalam

qalam noun: a reed pen used for Islamic calligraphy.

qalam: a reed pen used for Islamic calligraphy
Image: Baba66, CC BY 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

qalam (plural qalams)

  1. A reed pen used for Islamic calligraphy
    • The slender form of the reed pen—the qalam has frequently been compared to the thin, vertical stroke of the alif (Figure 1), the first letter of the Arabic alphabet and therefore the beginning of transmitted knowledge.1980, Anthony Welch, Islamic calligraphy: Meaning and symbol, Processing of Visible Language, pages 157-176

Forms of qalam

pluralqalams

Origin of qalam

Borrowed from Arabic قَلَم (qalam, “pen”), derived from Ancient Greek κάλαμος (kálamos, “reed”). Doublet of calamus.

Questions about qalam

What does qalam mean?
Qalam means a reed pen used for Islamic calligraphy.
What part of speech is qalam?
Qalam is a noun.
What is the plural of qalam?
The plural of qalam is qalams.

Words near qalam in the dictionary

  1. qajaq
  2. qajaqs
  3. Qajar
  4. Qajars
  5. Qaka
  6. qalam
  7. qalamdan
  8. qalamdans
  9. qalams
  10. qalandar
  11. qalandars

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: qalam (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “qalam.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/qalam. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.