Can you mention 10 English words that come from Arabic?
Can you mention 10 English words that come from Arabic?
Have you ever enjoyed a coffee with a candy sitting on the sofa in a cotton shirt? Maybe you don’t know that four words in this sentence come from Arabic.
Here are other words from Arabic you may (or may not!) be surprised by:
- Alcohol: from الكحل, al-kohl. Originally denoting a very fine powder, the word entered Latin with this meaning, until a Swiss alchemy and medicine writer extended it to distillates. The distillate of wine (“alcohol of wine”, ethanol) was one of them.
- Cotton: from قطن, qutn, cotton. It was very expensive and rare among the Romans until late medieval Arabs started exporting it at very low prices.
- Algebra: from الجبر, al-jabr, which means “restoring broken parts”. The word was first used with a mathematical meaning in a 9th century book of an Arabic mathematician, as part of an equation-solving method of “restoring and balancing” . When the book was translated three centuries later, the Latins imported both the word and the method, which laid the ground for modern mathematics.
- Coffee: from قهوة, qahwa, coffee. No, it didn’t start with Starbucks. People started drinking coffee in Yemen in the 15th century, then the beverage –and its name– spread to the whole world.
- Aubergine: from الباذنجان, al-bādhinjān, aubergine. Originally an Indian plant, the aubergine was unknown to the ancient Greeks and Romans, until medieval Arabs spread it to the Mediterranean.
- Candy: from قندي, qandī, “sugared with cane sugar”. Just like the aubergine, cane sugar originates in India. Medieval Arabs started cultivating it with an artificial irrigation that recreated its tropical habitat, then exported it to Europe. Imagine the first time Europeans tasted it!
- Assassin: from حشيشين, hashīshīn. This was the name given by the Arabs to a religious sect in the 12th century. The group was known for killing the chiefs of other sects (including crusaders) under the effect of hashish and it was thus widely feared by the Europeans. The word then evolved into the Italian “assassini”, whose meaning was generalized to all murderers. From Italian, it spread to French and then to English.
- Mattress: from مطرح, matrah, a large cushion to lie upon. The word entered European languages in the 12th century. Luckily for us, mattresses have become softer since then.
- Orange: from نارنج, nāranj, orange. Oranges were first introduced in the Mediterranean region by the Arabs in the 10th century. At the time, all oranges were bitter oranges, but bitter is better than nothing.
- Sofa: from صفّة, soffa, a low platform. The word entered Western languages through Turkish in the 16th century, initially referring only to the Middle-Eastern-style low dais with rugs and cushions. It then changed its meaning into “a sofa with legs” in France, at the time of King Louis XIV and his rich furniture.
References
Image: Sfondo de fotografie diseñado por Mrsiraphol – Freepik.com
