List of Arabic Loanwords in English - G

G

garble

غربل gharbal, to sift. Common in medieval Arabic before year 1000. Medieval and modern Catalan garbellar = "to sift" (1261), medieval Italian and Latin garbellare = "to sift" (1269). Earliest known record in English is 1393 garbele = "to sift". In late medieval and early modern English it was a frequently used word among spice merchants – imported spices had varying degrees of chaff residuals. Sifting and culling was word's usual meaning in English until the 19th century. The word is arguably the parent of the English garbage. The medieval Arabic ghirbāl = "a sieve" (and gharbal, the verb) looks like its own ancestry is in the late classical Latin cribellum = "a sieve" (ancestor of English cribble = "a sieve"). A change from cribellum to ghirbal involves transposing ri to ir. Transpositions of a comparable kind are often seen in Arabic borrowings from Latin and Greek, including the example of Apricot on this page where Arabic barqūq came from classical Latin praecoqua. The Arabic dirham money unit came from the ancient Greek word drachma.

gauze

قزّ qazz, plain silk – the dictionaries say this is an uncertain theory for the word's origin but they are almost unanimous the word very probably comes from medieval Arabic somehow. The English is from the French gaze, pronounced gazz in French, meaning "high-quality lightweight fabric" (very often but not necessarily silk). "The word, like so many names of supposed Oriental fabrics, is of obscure origin and varying sense."

gazelle

غزال ghazāl, gazelle. The earliest known record in the West is in Latin in the 12th century as gazela in a book about the First Crusade by Albert of Aix. Two species of gazelle are native in the Middle East.

gerbil, jerboa, gundi, jird

These are four different classes of rodents that are native to desert or semi-desert environments in North Africa and Asia, and not found natively in Europe. (1) 19th-century European naturalists created "gerbil" as a Latinate diminutive of the word jerboa . (2) يربوع yarbūʿa = jerboa (17th-century European borrowing) . (3) قندي qundī = gundi (18th-century European borrowing) . (4) جرد jird = jird (18th-century European borrowing) .

ghoul

غول ghūl, ghoul. Ghouls are a well-known part of Arabic folklore. The word's first appearance in the West was in an Arabic-to-French translation of the 1001 Arabian Nights tales in 1712. Its first appearance in English was in a popular novel, Vathek, an Arabian Tale by William Beckford, in 1786. Ghouls appear in English translations of the 1001 Arabian Nights tales in the 19th century.

giraffe

زرافة zarāfa, giraffe. The giraffe and its distinctiveness was discussed by medieval Arabic writers including Al-Jahiz (died 868) and Al-Masudi (died 956). The earliest records of the transfer of the Arabic word to the West are in Italian in the second half of the 13th century, a time at which a few giraffes were brought to the Kingdom of Sicily and Naples from a zoo in Cairo, Egypt.

guitar

قيتارة qītāra, a kind of guitar or lyre. The name is ultimately descended from ancient Greek kithara. "The name reached English several times, including 14th-century giterne from Old French. The modern word is directly from Spanish guitarra, from Arabic qitar." (Etymonline.com). The first record of the Spanish is circa 1330. An Arabic name of roughly the form qītāra | kīthār is very rare in medieval Arabic records. Lute and tanbur on this list are descended from names that are common in medieval Arabic records for guitar-type musical instruments.