The phonetic pattern, the structure or the mold which consists of vowels and suffixes and infixes, and into which you place the Shoresh letters to create nouns and adjectives. The words מפעל (Mif’al – factory), מקדש (Miqdash – temple), מגרש (Migrash – lot), and מטבח (Mitbach – kitchen) all have the same MiXXaX pattern which indicates a place (among other things).