As Samee'

Samʿ is hearing, and the Arabic leans towards hearing that responds rather than hearing that merely registers. From the same root come istamaʿa, to listen on purpose, and the word for an ear.

In fifteen of the twenty ayat carrying this written form al-ʿAlīm follows immediately — heard, and understood — and in four more it is al-Baṣīr, hearing and seeing named as one thing. The twentieth is not about God at all: it sets the deaf and the blind beside the hearing and the seeing and asks whether the two are equal. Some things are only ever said quietly, and that is not the same as not being said.