The Arabic word for society was coined to mean collective form

Evidence

It was in terms of education that the notion of’society’ or ‘social form’ had first been introduced in the writings of the 1870s. ‘The proper state of the education of individuals (both male and female), and its spread among them, Tahtawi had written, ‘organises the proper state of the education of the collective form, that is, the community in its entirety.’ The formation of individuals was to be the means to the formation of a ‘collective form’. Several such attempts were made to find a particular phrase or word for this collectivity that was to be organised by the discipline and instruction of individuals. Phrases such as al-intizam al-umrani (social organisation) and al-jamiyya al-muntazima (organised association) were used, but the sort of phrase that became common was al-hay’a al-mujtamaiyya – hay’a, meaning ‘form’ itself, in the sense of visible shape or condition, qualified with the adjective from the word mujtama`, collective. — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 385

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains etymology of al-hay’a al-mujtama`iyya — ‘society’ literally meaning ‘the collective form’.
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