maqam
noun
maqam is a noun meaning “A modal structure characterizing the art of music of countries in North Africa, West Asia and Central Asia” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled M-A-Q-A-M, and it appears about once in every 45 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of maqam is maqams or maqamat.
What does maqam mean?
noun
- 1
A modal structure characterizing the art of music of countries in North Africa, West Asia and Central Asia.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of maqam
- maqams plural
- maqamat plural
- maqaam
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is maqam?
Maqam appears about once in every 45 million words in written English, the 206,808th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Where does maqam come from?
Ultimately from Arabic مَقَام (maqām). Doublet of mugham.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).