Ka-ma-la, the Arabic trilateral root for ‘perfection’. Most Hindi/Urdu speakers are familiar with this root from usages like kamaal ka meaning ‘excellent, wonderful’ and ‘kamaal hai!’ which means ‘Great!’ but more often than not, it expresses a sense of frustration as in, ‘This is unbelievable.’

In collocations like kamaal ko pahaunchna, which means ‘to attain perfection,’ we can see the original meaning of kamaal as the ‘state of perfection’.

Kaamil is the active participle of ka-ma-la and means the one who is perfect or complete.

From ka-ma-la, we get the second derived form ka-mma-la, which is transitive and means ‘to make complete/perfect’. Its verbal noun takmiil, is the process of completing or perfecting something while its passive participle mukammal, stands for the thing that is completed or perfected. Many of us must have heard the last word in this famous song:

kabhii kisii ko mukammal jahaan nahiin miltaa

No one ever gets a complete/perfect world.

Listen to this song here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzw7kYH4w7Y