Like many other keywords of the most recent Egyptian revolution, “patience” or “forbearance” (al-sabr) is a term shot through with various resonances, laden with both positive and negative connotations. On the one hand, patience is extolled as one of the highest virtues in Islam, figuring prominently in many Qur’anic stories and aphorisms as the key to overcoming worldly adversity. Indeed, it is from these Qur’anic passages that Egyptian colloquial Arabic has derived its many aphorisms regarding patience, including: “Patience is good” (al-sabr tayyib), “Patience is beautiful” (al-sabr jamil), and “Patience is the key to deliverance” (al-sabr miftah al-farag). On the other hand, even Umm Kulthum (via ‘Abd al-Wahhab) informs us that “patience has limits” (li-l-sabr hudud), and for several decades, Egyptian colloquial poets (particularly the generation following the 1967 Naksa) have decried “al-sabr” as a tool of state oppression, a call from the ruling class (al-hukkam) for submission from the masses (al-mahkumin ‘alayhim) in the guise of an invitation to practice religious virtue. Drawing from the archive of materials at TahrirDocuments.org, this paper focuses on the alternative print media which proliferated after Mubarak’s departure (as opposed to the discourses which circulated during the eighteen days generally circumscribed as “the revolution”) to examine how the Arabic term sabr (patience, forbearance) became a kind of disputed semantic territory in the months following February 11, 2011, from the pages of state-sanctioned newspapers such as al-Ahram to those of Revolutionary Egypt (Misr al-Thawriyya), a weekly publication issued by the Popular Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (al-Lijan al-Sha'biyya li-l-Dif'ah 'an al-Thawra). Through close readings of two articles in particular, I show how the state press apparatus mobilized the simultaneously colloquial and religious valence of sabr to discourage demonstrations and encourage trust in (and submission to) the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, while Revolutionary Egypt exposed this call to forbearance as a “tool of the counter-revolution,” insisting that no revolution is complete without a total overhaul of the modes of production. In this analysis, I hope not only to open a larger discussion on sabr as a signifier with multiple and often conflicting resonances in Egyptian society, but also to turn the spotlight on this very interesting group and their excellent publications, which offer some of the most cogent and eloquent prose on the Tahrir Documents website.