Thursday, February 2, 2012

Arabic Loanwords in English (You Might Not Have Realized Originated There)

I know you probably know the obvious ones, like algebra or orange or zero.

But I just read the Wiki article "Arabic Loanwords in English" and was surprised by the provenance of quite a few.

Were you aware, for instance, the following words originated in Arabic...

ambergris (interesting backstory of how the -gris was added for disambiguation after 3 centuries of existence as merely "amber" in English)

aubergine(a change from al- to au- is typical in French-Arabic assimilation)

bezoar (an appropriately weird word for a weird thing)

candy (probably originally a Sanskrit word)

checkmate, check, exchequer, chess, chequered, unchecked, checkout, checkbox (I think I knew this at one time, via the French and back, but had forgotten.)

civet ("بد zabad, foam, spume; qaṭṭ al-zabād, "the spume cat", referring to a musky perfume taken from a gland in the animal. Seen in 14th century Italian spelled zibetto. Early usage in West was for the civet musk perfume. For musk Arabic uses the word مسك misk (the English word does not come from the Arabic word)."

cork (this one seems dubious to me although they might be right with that Spanish language etymon.)

cotton

gauze (dubious)

ghoul (courtesy Arabic-French translation of the Arabian Nights)

giraffe ( "زرافة zarāfa, giraffe. Arabic entered Italian and French in the late 13th century")

jar

julep

jumper

lemon

macrame

magazine ("makhāzin (from khazan, to store), storehouses. Used in Latin with that meaning in 1228 in Marseille, the earliest record in a Western language. Still used that way in French, Italian and Russian. Sometimes used that way in English in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, but more commonly in English a magazine was an arsenal, a gunpower store, and later a receptacle for storing bullets. A magazine in the publishing sense of the word started out in English in the 17th century meaning a store of information about military or navigation subjects.")

marcasite (!) (" مرقشيثا marqashīthā, iron sulfide, pyrite. An alchemy word. Used by Al-Razi in early 10th century and by Ibn Sina in early 11th century.[66] The earliest record in a Western language seems to be in an Arabic-to-Latin translation by Gerard of Cremona in the late 12th century.In modern English marcasite is defined as orthorhombic iron sulfide.") That one REALLY surprised me. I would have been "sure" that was an English language (actually American, I thought) coinage.

mattress

mohair, moire

typhoon (?) I had seen an etymology for this word as Chinese ("big wind" I thought?)

popinjay (parrot) Interesting shifts here...

(" ببغاء babaghā', parrot. The change of Arabic 'b' to English 'p' also occurs in the loanwords Apricot, Calipers, Julep, Jumper, Serendipity, Spinach, and Syrup. French gai = "jay (bird)". The French papegai = "parrot" has a late 12th century start date.The English dates from one century later.")

realgar (was this the sinopia of the ancient world?)

ream

safari (I knew this was Swahili, but it was Arabic first)

safflower

sash

scarlet

serendipity (I knew the literary origin of this word, but the article does not credit the author--the wonderful Walpole)

spinach

Swahili (mentioned above and here the very language takes its name from Arabic)

talc (could mean mica or talc)

talisman (Arabic via Greek)

tarragon

tuna

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