To those who have studied Arabic, the metalanguage that uses the three ‘abstract letters’ ف fā, ع ʿayn, and ل lām to form formulae that represent verb conjugation or noun patterns is not unfamiliar. To those less familiar with Arabic: most native Arabic words are derived from roots made of three letters, and conjugation and derivation (word-making) follow specific patterns, specific arrangements of the three root letters plus prefixes and/or suffixes. For example, the words for ‘a place where an action happens’ usually follow the pattern of ma + consonant 1 + consonant 2 + a + consonant 3. If I tell you then that the root s-k-n means ‘to live’, you will be able to derive ma + s + k + a + n, i.e. maskan ‘abode, living-place’. Similarly, if you know that k-t-b means ‘to write’, you will know that ma + k + t + a + b, i.e. maktab means ‘where writing happens’, i.e. ‘office’ (in Persian, the word maktab means ‘school’, which also has to do with writing). Therefore, ma + consonant 1 + consonant 2 + a + consonant 3 can be understood today as a ‘formula’. Now, saying ‘consonant 1, consonant 2, consonant 3’ (in fact, letters 1, 2, 3, since all letters represent consonants, as I have mentioned) all the time is tiring, so they can be substituted with real letters that symbolically represent all letters: f-ʿ-l, which actually means ‘to do’ in Arabic. So if I tell you that the ‘formula’ for ‘a place where something happens’ is mafʿal, you will be able to substitute the f, ʿ, and l with any set of three consonants that make more concrete sense and produce the word meaning the place where the action of this set of three consonants happens.