What it means
فعل (fe’l) means “verb.” Borrowed from Arabic (root f-‘-l, “to do, to act”), it is the standard grammar term for an action word. Persian inherited the whole Arabic grammar vocabulary, so this is what you hear from a teacher or read in a dictionary.
How to use it
- فعل ماضی (fe’l-e mâzi) “past-tense verb”
- این فعل بیقاعده است (in fe’l bi-qâ’ede ast) “this verb is irregular”
- فعل را صرف کن (fe’l râ sarf kon) “conjugate the verb”
How it appears in Persian sentences
The verb sits at the END of a Persian clause: subject, then object, then verb. In من کتاب میخوانم (man ketâb mikhânam) “I read a book,” the fe’l is میخوانم (mikhânam). Every Persian verb agrees with its subject in person and number, so the ending changes from -am to -i to -ad and so on.
Cultural note
Persian schoolchildren learn fe’l in the third or fourth year, alongside esm (noun) and sefat (adjective). The classic drill: take a verb like رفتن (raftan) “to go” and conjugate it across all six persons. If a Persian friend has studied grammar in school, they’ll talk about verbs using fe’l, not the English loanword.
References
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