امروز

امروز means “today” in Persian. The grid of yesterday-today-tomorrow is one of the cleanest small word-clusters in the language.

What it actually means

امروز means “today” in Persian. It is one corner of the native time grid: امروز (today), دیروز (yesterday), فردا (tomorrow). The word is a compound: ام (em-, “this”) plus روز (rūz, “day”). So امروز literally reads “this day,” parallel to the way دیروز means “the gone day” and فردا means “the ahead day.” Iranians use امروز constantly for time markers, dates, and casual scheduling: امروز چه روزیه؟ (emruz che rūzī-ye, “what day is it today?”), امروز خونه‌ام (emruz khūne-am, “I’m home today”). The word also slots into compound expressions: امروزی (emruzī, “modern, contemporary”), امروز و فردا (emruz va fardā, “any day now,” literally “today and tomorrow”).

How to say it

امروز is invariant. The pronunciation occasionally tightens to “emroz” in fast speech, but the written form does not change. The word triggers present or near-future tense by default: “امروز می‌رم” (today I’m going), “امروز کار دارم” (today I have work). Pairing امروز with a past tense (“امروز رفتم”) signals an action that already happened earlier in the same day.

In a sentence

Cultural note

امروز is built from ام (em-, “this”) plus روز (rūz, “day”), the same compound logic that produces دیروز (yesterday, “gone day”) and فردا (tomorrow, “ahead day”). The pattern is one of the cleanest small grids in Persian. ام is an Old Persian deictic particle (“this”), surviving in modern Persian within compounds like امسال (emsāl, “this year”) and امشب (emshab, “tonight, this night”). The native time vocabulary survived the heavy Arabic borrowing of the Islamic period because day-words rank among the most-used items in any language and tend to resist replacement. The proverbial phrase “امروز و فردا کردن” (literally “to do today-and-tomorrow”) means “to procrastinate,” capturing the same idea English does with “putting it off.” Iranian conversation reaches for امروز whenever scheduling, planning, or just narrating a day. The word also acts as a soft anchor for “now”: “امروز جوون‌ها…” (the youth of today) opens countless older-Iranian commentaries about modern life, the way English “kids these days” does.

Related

You will see this word in conversation with its time-set siblings دیروز (yesterday) and فردا (tomorrow). For the long view of how Persian time vocabulary stayed native, see 2,500 years of Persian.