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This article is concerned with loanwords, that is, words in English that derive from Persian, either directly, or more often, from one or more intermediary languages.
Many words of Persian origin have made their way into the English language through different, often circuitous, routes. Some of them, such as "paradise", date to cultural contacts between the Persian people and the ancient Greeks or Romans and through Greek and Latin found their way to English. Persian as the second important language of Islam has influenced many languages in the Muslim world such as Arabic and Turkish, and its words have found their way beyond that region.
Iran (Persia) remained largely impenetrable to English-speaking travelers well into the 19th century. Iran was protected from Europe by overland trade routes that passed through territory inhospitable to foreigners, while trade at Iranian ports in the Persian Gulf was in the hands of locals. In contrast, intrepid English traders operated in Mediterranean seaports of the Levant from the 1570s, and some vocabulary describing features of Ottoman culture found their way into the English language. Thus many words in the list below, though originally from Persian, arrived in English through the intermediary of Ottoman Turkish language.
Many Persian words also came into English through Urdu during British colonialism. Persian was the language of the Mughal court before British rule in India even though locals in North India spoke Hindustani.
Other words of Persian origin found their way into European languages—and eventually reached English at second-hand—through the Moorish-Christian cultural interface in the Iberian peninsula during the Middle Ages thus being transmitted through Arabic.
Possibly of Persian origin. See entry for "Peri" below
A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged alphabetically, which may include information on definitions, usage, etymologies, pronunciations, translation, etc. It is a lexicographical reference that shows inter-relationships among the data.
Modern Standard Hindi, commonly referred to as Hindi, is a member of the Indo-Aryan language group within the Indo-European language family. Hindi is considered a Sanskritised register of the Hindustani language, which itself is based primarily on the Khariboli dialect of Delhi and neighbouring areas. It is the preferred official language of India, although much national business is also done in English and the other languages recognized in the Indian constitution. It is the official language of India alongside English in nine states and three union territories and an additional official language in three other states. Hindi is also one of the 22 scheduled languages of the Republic of India.
Webster's Dictionary is any of the US English language dictionaries edited in the early 19th century by Noah Webster (1758–1843), a US lexicographer, as well as numerous related or unrelated dictionaries that have adopted the Webster's name in his honor. "Webster's" has since become a genericized trademark in the United States for US English dictionaries, and is widely used in dictionary titles.
Merriam-Webster, Incorporated is an American company that publishes reference books and is mostly known for its dictionaries. It is the oldest dictionary publisher in the United States.
Paisa is a monetary unit in several countries. The word is also a generalised idiom for money and wealth. In India, Nepal, and Pakistan, the paisa currently equals 1⁄100 of a rupee. In Bangladesh, the poysha equals 1⁄100 of a Bangladeshi taka. In Oman, the baisa equals 1⁄1000 of an Omani rial.
Etymology is the study of the origin and evolution of words, including their constituent units of sound and meaning, across time. In the 21st century a subfield within linguistics, etymology has become a more rigorously scientific study. Most directly tied to historical linguistics, philology, and semiotics, it additionally draws upon comparative semantics, morphology, pragmatics, and phonetics in order to attempt a comprehensive and chronological catalogue of all meanings and changes that a word carries throughout its history. The origin of any particular word is also known as its etymology.
Folk etymology – also known as (generative) popular etymology, analogical reformation, (morphological)reanalysis and etymological reinterpretation – is a change in a word or phrase resulting from the replacement of an unfamiliar form by a more familiar one through popular usage. The form or the meaning of an archaic, foreign, or otherwise unfamiliar word is reinterpreted as resembling more familiar words or morphemes.
The word "orange" is a noun and an adjective in the English language. In both cases, it refers primarily to the orange fruit and the color orange, but has many other derivative meanings.
Hindustani is one of the predominant languages of South Asia, with federal status in the republics of India and Pakistan in its standardized forms of Hindi and Urdu respectively. It is widely spoken and understood as a second language in Nepal, Bangladesh, and the Persian Gulf and as such is considered a lingua franca in the northern Indian subcontinent. It is also one of the most widely spoken languages in the world by total number of speakers. It developed in north India, principally during the Mughal Empire, when the Persian language exerted a strong influence on the Western Hindi languages of central India; this contact between the Hindu and Muslim cultures resulted in the core Indo-Aryan vocabulary of the Indian dialect of Hindi spoken in Delhi, whose earliest form is known as Old Hindi, being enriched with Persian loanwords. Rekhta, or "mixed" speech, which came to be known as Hindustani, Hindi, Hindavi, and Urdu, also locally known as Lashkari or Lashkari Zaban in long form, was thus created. This form was elevated to the status of a literary language, and after the partition of colonial India and independence this collection of dialects became the basis for modern standard Hindi and Urdu. Although these official languages are distinct registers with regards to their formal aspects, such as modern technical vocabulary, they continue to be all but indistinguishable in their vernacular form. From the colonial era onwards, Hindustani has also taken in many words from English, with an urban English-influenced variety emerging known as Hinglish.
Despite the various English dialects spoken from country to country and within different regions of the same country, there are only slight regional variations in English orthography, the two most notable variations being British and American spelling. Many of the differences between American and British or Commonwealth English date back to a time before spelling standards were developed. For instance, some spellings seen as "American" today were once commonly used in Britain, and some spellings seen as "British" were once commonly used in the United States.
Irregardless is a word sometimes used in place of regardless or irrespective, which has caused controversy since the early twentieth century, though the word appeared in print as early as 1795. The word is mostly known for being controversial and often proscribed, and is often mentioned in discussions on prescriptive and descriptive lexicography.
The English word god comes from the Old English god, which itself is derived from the Proto-Germanic *gudą. Its cognates in other Germanic languages include guþ, gudis, guð, god, and got.
Pati is a title meaning "master" or "lord". The word is in common usage in the Indian subcontinent today. Etymologically, the word derives from the Indo-European language family and finds references in various classical Indo-Iranian languages, including Sanskrit, Old Persian language and Avestan. In modern-day Hindustani and other Indo-Aryan languages, pati and patni have taken on the meanings of husband and wife respectively when used as standalone words. The feminine equivalent in Indo-Aryan languages is patni. The term pati is frequently used as a suffix, e.g. lakhpati.
Abbreviation | Reference abbreviated |
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AHD online | The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th edition. Free site. |
MW | Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged. Merriam-Webster, 2002. |
MW Online Archived 22 December 2006 at the Wayback Machine | Merriam-Webster Unabridged. Subscription required. |
OED | Oxford English Dictionary. Ed. J.A. Simpson and E.S.C. Weiner. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989. |
OED Online | Oxford University Press. Subscription required. |