What it means
طول (tul) comes from the Arabic root ط-و-ل (t-w-l), which expresses the idea of being long or tall. Persian borrowed it to cover length as a spatial dimension (the length of a table, a road, a piece of fabric) and duration in time (طول کشیدن means “to take a long time,” literally “to draw out in length”). In geography, طول جغرافیایی (tul-e joghrâfiyâyi) means longitude. A natural contrast word is عرض (arz), meaning width or latitude, so the pair طول و عرض is used to describe both dimensions of a flat surface and geographic coordinates.
How to use it
- طول این میز چقدره؟ (tul-e in miz chaqadre?) “What is the length of this table?”
- طول کشید تا اومدی! (tul keshid tâ omadi!) “It took you so long to get here!”
- طول جغرافیایی تهران تقریباً ۵۱ درجهست. (tul-e joghrâfiyâyi-ye Tehrân taqriban panjâh-o-yek daraje-st.) “Tehran’s longitude is approximately 51 degrees.”
- در طول روز خیلی کار کردم. (dar tul-e ruz kheili kâr kardam.) “Throughout the day I worked a lot.”
Cultural note
The phrase طول کشیدن, to take a long time, is one of the most commonly used verb compounds in Persian conversation. Iranians use it constantly: کارا طول کشید (the things took long), ترافیک طول کشید (traffic dragged on). The shift from spatial length to temporal duration is built into the word’s Arabic root as well, which carried both senses in classical Arabic. The geographic pair طول و عرض (longitude and latitude) is taught early in Iranian schools and remains a standard reference point for the word’s technical range.