Nadia Ayoub Aug 5, 2011:

Hi Ethan, The imperative does not have any hamza: احْذِفْ

Eyal Sherf (asker) Aug 5, 2011:

Ok, thanks everyone for your detailed explanations.
So, I just wanted to confirm that all of the following are correct:
حَذَفَ is the past tense?
The imperative is إحْذِفْ ?
There is NO such verb as أَحْذَفَ ?

gsaboft Aug 4, 2011:

2 c's Replacing a linking hamza with a strong one (همزة القطع) is one of the most common typos in Arabic texts. In the above example the hamza is probably a typo. The root, though, forms not only form I but also forms II and VII - حذّف، انحذف

Nadia Ayoub Aug 4, 2011:

Dima is right the imperative is spelt without the hamza.

dimamarcel Aug 4, 2011:

Hi Ethan. Sorry but I was researching what measure 4 & 1 are :)

أَحْذِف = I delete
احْذِفْ = Imperative form of delete (this Alef is called Helper Alef)

I'm sorry to say that a lot of us in the Arab world misspell the Alef. If the spelling in your original text is أَحْذِف, I can assure you it's one of those common mistakes.

Eyal Sherf (asker) Aug 4, 2011:

Thank you for this. I do realize that the appearance in the source text is the imperative, but I was asking about the original past tense. If that indeed is the imperative, with hamza on top of alif, then the past tense is in measure 4 - احذف. I just wasn't sure because Wehr only lists measures 1,2. It sounds like you do agree that احذف exists. Sorry if I'm needlessly complicating this...