شَيْء
Shayʾ: thing
The 41st most common word in the Quran · Updated 18 October 2026
Short answer
شَيْء (shayʾ) means "thing". It appears 283 times in the Quran, making it the 41st most common word: about 0.37% of all the words you read.
#41most common word
283times in the Quran
0.37%of all the words
266ayahs it appears in
Example from the Quran
وَكُلَّ شَىْءٍ أَحْصَيْنَٰهُ كِتَٰبًا
An-Naba 78:29 · Read the translation on Quran.com
It first appears in Al-Baqarah 2:20.
How it appears in the Quran
The most common ways شَيْء is written, with small words like "and" or endings like "his" attached:
- شَىْءٍ176×
- شَيْـًٔا77×
- شَىْءٌ11×
- بِشَىْءٍ6×
- أَشْيَآءَهُمْ3×
The count includes every form of the word: singular and plural, and with endings like "the", "and" or "his" attached.
Related words from the same root
شَيْء comes from the root ش ي أ. Other common words from this root: شَاءَ (to will, to wish).
Learn shayʾ and the other common words
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Sources
- Counts calculated by Ayah Explorer from the Quranic Arabic Corpus (morphology v0.4), using the open quran-morphology dataset.