List of Arabic Loanwords in English - Loanwords Listed in Alphabetical Order

Loanwords Listed in Alphabetical Order

admiral

أمير amīr, commander. Amīr al-bihār = "commander of the seas" was a title in use in Arabic Sicily, and was continued by the Normans in Sicily in a Latinized form, and then adopted successively by medieval Genoese and French. Modern French is "amiral". An English form under King Edward III (14th century) was "Amyrel of the Se". Insertion of the 'd' was doubtless influenced by allusion to common Latin "admire". In medieval Latin, besides meaning an admiral, the word is also found meaning an Arabic emir.

adobe

الطوبة al-tūba | at-tūba, the brick. The Arabic dictionary of Al-Jawhari dated about year 1000 made the comment that the Arabic word came from the Coptic language. The first record in a Western language is 12th-century Spanish adobe with the same meaning as today's. Other cases of Arabic 't' becoming medieval Spanish 'd' include es:Algodón, es:Ajedrez, es:Badana and es:Badea. The word entered English from Mexico in the 18th and 19th centuries.

albatross

الغطّاس al-ghattās, literally "the diver", presumably a cormorant or others of the pelecaniform birds, which are diving waterbirds. The derived Spanish alcatraz has its earliest record in 1386 as a type of pelican. "Alcatras" was borrowed into English in the 16th century from Spanish and meant pelecaniform bird not albatross. Beginning in the 17th century, every European language adopted "albatros" with a 'b' for these Pacific Ocean birds, the 'b' having been mobilized from Latinate alba = white.

alchemy, chemistry

الكيمياء al-kīmiyā, alchemy. The Arabic entered medieval Latin as alchimia, whose first known record is in about year 1140 in an Arabic-to-Latin translation by Plato Tiburtinus. The Arabic word had its root in a late classical Greek word (the alchemy article has more details). The late medieval Latin words alchimicus = "alchemical" and alchimista = "alchemist" gave rise to the words chemical and chemist beginning in the 16th century in French and Latin.

alcohol

الكحل al-kohl, finely powdered stibnite and any similar fine powder. The word with that meaning entered Latin in the 13th century. In 14th-century Latin it meant any finely ground and sifted material. In the later Latin alchemy literature it took on the additional meaning of a purified material, or "quintessence", which was arrived at by distillation methods. The restriction to "quintessence of wine" (ethanol) started with the alchemist Paracelsus in the 16th century. The biggest-selling English dictionary of the 18th century (Bailey's) defined alcohol as "a very fine and impalpable powder, or a very pure well rectified spirit." Crossref kohl on the list.

alcove

القبّة al-qobba, "the vault" or cupola. That sense for the word is in an Arabic dictionary dated around year 1000 and the same sense is documented in Spanish alcoba around 1275. Spanish begot French, earliest record 1646, and French begot English.

alembic (distillation apparatus)

الانبيق al-anbīq, "the still" (for distilling). The Arabic root is traceable to Greek ambix = "cup". The earliest chemical distillations were by Greeks in Alexandria in about the 3rd century AD. Their ambix became the 9th-century Arabic al-anbīq, which became the 12th-century Latin alembicus.

alfalfa

الفصفصة al-fisfisa, alfalfa. The Arabic entered medieval Spanish. In medieval Spain alfalfa had a reputation as the best fodder for horses. The ancient Romans grew alfalfa but called it an entirely different name; history of alfalfa. The English name started in the far-west USA in the mid-19th century from Spanish alfalfa.

algebra

الجبر al-jabr, completing, or restoring broken parts. The mathematical sense originates from the title of the book "al-kitāb al-mukhtaṣar fī ḥisāb al-jabr wa al-muqābala", "The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completing and Balancing" by the 9th-century mathematician al-Khwarizmi. This algebra book was translated to Latin more than once in the 12th century. In medieval Arabic mathematics, al-jabr and al-muqābala were the names of the two main preparatory steps used to solve an algebraic equation and the phrase "al-jabr and al-muqābala" came to mean "method of equation-solving". The medieval Latins borrowed the method and the names.

algorithm, algorism

الخوارزمي al-khwārizmī, a short name for the mathematician Muhammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī. The appellation al-Khwārizmī means "from Khwarizm". The Latinization of this name to "Algorismi" in the late 12th century gave rise to algorismus in the early 13th. Until the late 19th century both algorismus and algorithm simply meant the "Arabic" decimal number system.

alidade

العضادة al-ʿiḍāda (from ʿiḍad, pivoting arm), a certain kind of surveying instrument whose usual context of use was in astronomy. The word was used by for example the astronomers Abū al-Wafā' Būzjānī (died 998) and Abu al-Salt (died 1134). Word entered Latin in the Late Middle Ages.

alizarin

العصارة al-ʿasāra, the juice (from ʿasar, to squeeze). Alizarin is a red dye with considerable commercial usage. The origin and early history of the word alizarin is unclear, and a minority of dictionaries say the connection with al-ʿasāra is improbable.

alkali

القلي al-qalī | al-qilī, an alkaline material derived from the ashes of certain plants. Particularly plants that grew on alkaline soils—see Salsola kali. Al-Jawhari (died 1003) said "al-qilī is obtained from glassworts". In today's terms, the medieval al-qalī was mainly composed of sodium carbonate and potassium carbonate. The Arabs used it as an ingredient in making soap, and making glass. Earliest record in the West is in a 13th-century Latin alchemy text, with the same meaning as the Arabic.

amber, ambergris

عنبر ʿanbar, meaning ambergris, i.e. a waxy material produced in the stomach of sperm whales and used historically for perfumery. The word passed into the Western languages in the mid-medieval centuries with the same meaning as the Arabic. In the late medieval centuries the Western word took on the additional meaning of amber, from causes not understood. The word's two meanings – ambergris and amber – then co-existed for more than three centuries. "Ambergris" was coined to eliminate the ambiguity. But it wasn't until about 1700 that the ambergris meaning died out in English amber.

anil, aniline

النيل al-nīl | an-nīl, indigo dye. Arabic word came from Sanskrit nili = "indigo". The indigo dye originally came from tropical India. From medieval Arabic, anil became the usual word for indigo in Portuguese and Spanish. Indigo dye was uncommon throughout Europe until the 16th century; history of indigo. In English anil is a natural indigo dye or the tropical American plant it is obtained from. Aniline is a technical word in dye chemistry dating from mid-19th-century Europe.

apricot

البرقوق al-barqūq, apricot. Arabic is in turn traceable back to Byzantine Greek and thence to classical Latin praecoqua, literally "precocious" and specifically precociously ripening peaches, i.e. apricots. The Arabic was passed onto the 14th-century Portuguese albricoque and Catalan albercoc = "apricot". Seen in 1578 in English spelled abrecox.

arsenal

دار صناعة dār sināʿa, house of manufacturing. "Ibn Khaldoun quotes an order of the Caliph Abdalmelic to build at Tunis a dār sināʿa for the construction of everything necessary for the equipment and armament of vessels." In the West the word's early history is tied to the then-famous Arsenal of Venice, which for centuries in Republic of Venice was a place for building ships and military armaments for ships on a large scale. 14th-century Italian included the spellings "tarcenale", "terzana", "arzana", "arsana", "tersanaia", "tersanaja".... In today's Italian, it:Darsena is a dockyard for repairing ships while it:Arsenale is a storage place for munitions. In today's French, fr:Arsenal means both a naval dockyard and an arsenal. The early records in English (16th century) contain the same dual meanings as in today's French.

artichoke

الخرشوف al-kharshūf, artichoke. The word with that sense was used by for example Al-Razi (died 930). Early Spanish carchiofa (1423), Italian carciofjo (circa 1525) are reasonably close to the Arabic precedent and so are today's Spanish alcachofa, Italian carciofo. It is not clear how the word was corrupted to French artichault (1538), northern Italian articiocch (circa 1550), English artochock (1591), but all of the etymology dictionaries say it is a corruption.

assassin

حشاشين ḥashāshīn, an Arabic nickname for the Nizari branch of Ismailism in the Levant during the Crusades era. This sect carried out assassinations against chiefs of other sects, including Christians, and the story circulated in Europe at the time (13th century). Generalization of the sect's nickname to the meaning of "assassin" happened in Italian after the Crusades era was over.

attar (of roses)

عطر ʿitr (plural: ʿutūr), perfume, aroma. The English word came from India in the late 18th century. The word is ultimately from Arabic.

aubergine

الباذنجان al-bādhinjān, aubergine. The Arabic entered medieval Spanish, from which comes modern Spanish berenjena = "aubergine" and Catalan albergínia = "aubergine". French aubergine comes from the Catalan form. It embodies a change from al- to au- that happened in French. . Incidentally the aubergine food recipe name Moussaka is also of Arabic descent.

average

The records of this word in the Western languages begin in Genoa in the 12th century followed by Provence and Catalonia in the 13th. In the West, the word's early usage was in sea-commerce on the Mediterranean, and its early meaning was a lot different from what it is in English today. The medieval Arabic parent word was عوار ʿawār = "a defect, or anything defective or damaged" and عوارية ʿawārīa = "defective, damaged or partially spoiled goods". That begot the 12th century Italian avaria = "damage, loss or unexpected expenses arising during a merchant sea voyage". Italian avaria begot French avarie which begot English "averay" (1491) and English "average" (1502), all with the same meaning as the Italian. In Italian today avaria still means "damage" as well as meaning "average". The transformation in the semantics began with the practice in later medieval and early modern Western merchant marine law contracts under which if the ship met a bad storm and some of the goods had to be thrown overboard to make the ship lighter and safer, then all merchants whose goods were on the ship were to suffer proportionately (and not whoever's goods were thrown overboard); and more generally there was to be proportionate distribution of any avaria. From there the word was adopted by British insurers, creditors, and merchants for talking about their losses as being spread across their whole portfolio of assets and having a mean proportion. The modern meaning developed out of that and dates from the mid 18th century in English. .

azimuth

السموت al-sumūt | as-sumūt, the paths, the directions. Origin in texts of Astronomy in medieval Islam and the Arabic version of the Astrolab instrument. The first recorded use in English is in Geoffrey Chaucer's 1390s Treatise on the Astrolabe which used the word many times. A hundred years earlier the word is in Spanish as acimut.

azure (color), lazurite (mineral)

لازورد lāzward | lāzūard, lazurite and lapis lazuli, a rock with a vivid blue color. The Arabic came from "Lajward" the location of a large deposit of this blue rock in northeastern Afghanistan. The color azure without the initial 'L' was in all the western Romance languages in the later medieval centuries, and still is today, but it is spelled with the 'L' in today's Russian, Ukrainian and Polish (лазурь, lazur). "The 'L' is supposed to have been lost in the Romance languages through being taken as the definite article."