List of Arabic Loanwords in English - C

C

caliber, calipers

قالب qālib, mold.

camphor

كافور kāfūr, camphor from the East Indies tree Cinnamomum camphora. The medieval Arabs imported camphor by sea from the East Indies for aromatic uses and medical uses. Among the Latins the records begin in the late 9th century (with spelling cafora) though records are scarce until the 12th century. . Another imported Asian wood product which had both aromatic and medical uses in late medieval Europe and had Arabic word ancestry is Sandalwood, from Arabic صندل sandal. The Arabs got the words in the Indies along with the goods.

candy

قندي qandī, sugared. Arabic and Persian qand = "cane sugar" is believed to have come from Sanskritic. Cane sugar developed in ancient India. The plant is native to a tropical climate. The medieval Arabs grew it with artificial irrigation and exported some of the product to the Latins. The word candi entered all the Western languages in the later medieval centuries.

carat (gold purity), carat (mass)

قيراط qīrāt, a small unit of weight, defined as one-twentyfourth (1/₂₄) of the weight of a certain coin namely the medieval Arabic gold dinar, and alternatively defined by reference to a weight of (e.g.) 4 barley seeds. The medieval Arabic word came from an ancient Greek word keration, which was a small unit of weight too. The Arabic word was adopted in the Western languages as a measurement term for the proportion of gold in a gold alloy, especially in a gold coin, beginning in the 13th century.

caraway (seed)

كرويا karawiyā, caraway seed. Pretty common in mid-medieval Arabic. Spelled "caraway" in English in the 1390s in a cookery book.

carob (seed)

خرّوب kharrūb, the edible bean of the carob tree. Carobs were used in medieval medicine and the word is in Arabic medical books by for example Al-Razi and Ibn Sina, and later in Latin medical books by for example Matthaeus Silvaticus and Guy de Chauliac.

carrack

This is an old type of large sailing ship. The word's early records in the West are in the 12th and 13th centuries in the maritime republic of Genoa spelled carraca | caracca. The word then passed into medieval French and Spanish. While it is believed to have been taken from Arabic there are different contenders for which Arabic word, namely: (1) قراقير qarāqīr = "merchant ships" (plural of qurqūr, "merchant ship") and (2) حرّاقة harrāqa = "warship" . Another old type of sailing ship with Arabic word-origin is the Xebec . Another is the Felucca . Another is the Dhow .

check, checkmate, chess, exchequer, chequered, unchecked, checkout, checkbox, checkbook ...

The many uses of the word "check" in English are all descended from Persian shah = king and the use of this word in the game of chess. Chess was introduced to Europe by Arabs, who pronounced the last h in الشاه shāh hard, giving rise to the 12th-century French form eschac (also Catalan escac), and then French eschec, which the English is derived from. . The "mate" in checkmate is from the medieval Arabic chess term شاه مات shāh māt = "king dies".

cipher, decipher

صفر sifr, zero. Latin cifra was the parent of English cipher. The word came to Latin Europe with Arabic numerals in the later 12th century. Original meaning zero, then any numeral, then numerically encoded message. The last meaning, and decipher, dates from the 1520s in English, 1490s in French, 1470s in Italian. But in English cipher also continued to be used as another word for zero until the 19th century.

civet (mammal), civet (perfume)

زبد zabad, foam, spume; qatt al-zabād, "spume cat", referring to a musky perfume excreted from a gland in the African civet. Al-Masudi (died 956) said the perfume, زباد zabād, was taken from a cat-like animal in India. That can be true as well because some species of civet are native in the Indies. The word is in 15th-century Italian as zibetto = "civet perfume". Records of the form Civet start in Catalan 1372 and French 1401. . Incidentally the botanical genus Abelmoschus got its name from Arabic حبّ المسك habb el-misk = "musk seed", a seed yielding a musky perfume.

coffee, café

قهوة qahwa, coffee. Coffee drinking originated in Yemen in the 15th century. Qahwa (itself of uncertain origin) begot Turkish kahveh which begot Italian caffè. The latter word-form entered most Western languages in and around the early 17th century. The Western languages in the early 17th century also have numerous records where the word-form was directly from the Arabic, e.g. Cahoa in 1610, Cahue in 1615, Cowha in 1619. Turkish phonology does not have a 'W' and the change from 'W' to 'V' in going from Arabic qahwa to Turkish kahveh can be seen in many other loanwords going from Arabic into Turkish (e.g. Arabic fatwa -> Turkish fetva). . Cafe mocha, a type of coffee, is named after the port city of Mocha, Yemen, which was an early coffee exporter.

cork

The earliest records in England are 1303 "cork" and 1342 "cork" meaning bulk cork bark imported from Iberia. The word is believed to have come from a Spanish form alcorque = "slipper shoes made of cork". This Spanish "al-" word cannot be found in Arabic writings, but almost all etymology dictionaries nevertheless state that it is almost surely from Arabic because of the "al-". The ancient Romans used cork and called it, among other names, cortex (literally meaning "bark"), which is the likely ultimate origin. Crossref modern Spanish es:Alcornoque = "cork tree" and es:Corcho = "cork material". Corcho is not from Arabic.

cotton

قطن qutun, cotton. This word entered the Romance languages in the mid-12th century and English a century later. Cotton fabric was known to the ancient Romans but it was rare in the Romance-speaking lands until imports from the Arabic-speaking lands in the later medieval era at transformatively lower prices.

crimson, carmine

قرمزي qirmizī, color of a certain red dye widely used in the later medieval centuries for dyeing silk and wool. See kermes in this list. The letter 'n' in crimson and carmine descends from the medieval Latin forms cremesinus | carmesinus where -inus is a Latin suffix.

curcuma (plant genus), curcumin (yellow dye), curcuminoid (chemicals)

كركم kurkum, meaning ground turmeric root, also saffron. Turmeric dye gives a saffron yellow colour. Medieval Arabic dictionaries say kurkum is used as a yellow dye and used as a medicine. In the West the early records have meaning turmeric and they are in late medieval Latin medical books that were influenced by Arabic medicine.