Ala rasi (Arabic على راسي, “on my head”) is a colloquial Arabic reply to a request that means “gladly” or “consider it done.” Saying it puts the other person’s wish, figuratively, on your head: a sign of respect as well as agreement.
Meaning and Origin
SBS Arabic’s Hana Yassin, in a September 2020 explainer, translates it literally as “above my head” and calls it “an old saying used when someone asks you for a favour”; to answer “ala rassi” implies you “would do anything” for the person asking. The Eton Institute adds that you would say it “when you hold a person in high regard.”
The head carries that weight because of what the word means. In The National’s Arabic word of the week (August 2024), Maan Jalal notes that rass is the physical head but also “the highest point of any object” and can mean the ruler or leader of a group.
Variants
| Form | Arabic | Literal meaning | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| ala rasi / ala rassi / a3la rasse | على راسي | on my head | SBS, 365 Days of Lebanon |
| ala ayni wa rasi | على عيني وراسي | on my eyes and on my head | The National |
| min ayouni | من عيوني | from my eyes | Eton Institute |
Romanized spellings vary online: ala, a3la; rasi, rassi, rasse.
Dialect Usage
The hashtag spells “head” as راس, the spoken form rās. Wiktionary records rās for “head” in Egyptian, South Levantine, Hijazi, Libyan, Moroccan and Chadian Arabic, which is why the phrase reads as everyday speech.
A Lebanese blog, 365 Days of Lebanon, describes the gesture that often goes with it: “In Lebanon when someone asks us for a favor, we put our right hand on our head and we simply say a3la rasse.” The same post says the expression shows “respect, consent, obedience, compliance, and full approval by the speaker.”
Sources
- https://www.sbs.com.au/language/english/seven-arabic-words-and-phrases-that-simply-don-t-translate-into-english
- https://thenationalnews.com/arts-culture/2024/08/02/arabic-word-of-the-week-rass
- https://etoninstitute.com/blog/8-hilarious-arabic-sayings/
- https://365daysoflebanon.com/2016/01/30/anything-for-you/
- https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%B3