How do you say rock, paper, scissors in Arabic?

حجر ورق مقص — literally “stone, paper, scissors” — is the Arabic name of the hand game, chanted in the same order as English. The three words are all core vocabulary on their own: حجر (stone), ورق (paper — also “playing cards” and “leaves”), and مقص (scissors, from قصّ, “to cut”). One chant, three high-frequency nouns.

The fun of the clip is hearing a small child mangle the chant — “ووار ام قص” — the way English toddlers say “wock, paper, thithers,” before the prank with the hair glue lands. Note مقص follows a common tool pattern: an م prefix on a verb root (قصّ, to cut) builds the instrument that does it, like مفتاح (key, from فتح “open”).