مدرسه

مدرسه is the Persian word for “school.” The same root produced English “madrasa” plus a whole family of Persian study vocabulary.

What it actually means

مدرسه means “school” in Persian, used for any educational institution from kindergarten through high school. Iranians distinguish school types with modifiers: مدرسه ابتدایی (madrese-ye ebtedāyī, elementary school), مدرسه راهنمایی (madrese-ye rāhnamāyī, middle school), دبیرستان (dabīrestān, high school, a separate word). The word مدرسه itself originally borrowed from Arabic and then expanded into the everyday school word. Persian also keeps دانشگاه (dāneshgāh, university) as a native compound (“knowledge-place”), reserving مدرسه for non-university contexts. The verb درس خواندن (dars khāndan, “to study,” literally “to read lesson”) shares the same Arabic root and is one of the most common verb phrases in Iranian student life.

How to say it

مدرسه is invariant in form. The plural is regular: مدرسه‌ها (madrese-hā). Common collocations include به مدرسه رفتن (to go to school) and از مدرسه آمدن (to come from school). Persian usually drops the article, so “the school” and “a school” both render as just مدرسه, with context disambiguating.

In a sentence

Cultural note

مدرسه is borrowed from Arabic مَدْرَسَة (madrasa, “place of study”), built from the trilateral root د ر س (d-r-s) meaning “to study, to learn.” The same root produces a family of Persian words: درس (dars, lesson), دروس (durūs, lessons, plural), مدرس (modarres, teacher / instructor), تدریس (tadrīs, teaching), and درس خواندن (to study). The Arabic source word “madrasa” is also borrowed directly into English, where it specifically refers to Islamic religious schools. In Iran, مدرسه is the everyday non-religious word for school, and the religious-school sense is carried by حوزه (howze) or مدرسه علمیه (madrese-ye elmīye). The word entered Persian during the Islamic period (after the 7th century CE), along with much of Persian’s intellectual and educational vocabulary. Iranian schooling traditionally followed a different structure than Western models. Until the 20th century reforms, learning happened largely in mosques, mektabs, and madrasas of the older religious sense. The modern مدرسه system was built during the late Qajar and Pahlavi reforms, layering European-style classrooms on top of older terminology.

Related

You will see this word paired with کتاب (book, what students read), کار (work, what school feels like), and خوردن (to eat, what students do at lunch break). For the broader story of Persian’s Arabic loanwords, see Persian etymology: Arabic, French, and Turkish in your Farsi.