Interesting English Words Derived from Arabic - Enhance Your Vocabulary!

Greetings - Marhaban. A number of useful words have arrived to us by way of Arabic(with the total around 900). Let's enumerate some of them now(or al-aan for the Arabic word for "now")!


albacore
This is where your canned tuna comes from! Well, mostly. An albacore is a pelagic fish(i.e., living in the ocean or sea)!

alcazar
Famous in Spain, these are Spanish fortresses or palaces. Directly from the Arabic word al-qasr - the castle.

alembic
This word has two meanings: the first is as an apparatus using two parts used for distillation(the ancestor of the pot still). The second, more figurative, meaning is anything that transmutes or refines, as if through distillation.

attar
This is a perfume or essential oil obtained from flowers. From itr, meaning "aroma."

azimuth
Derived from as-sumut, "the paths", this is angle between the projected vector(of the object in the sky) and a reference vector(i.e., North).

crimson

This word is dear to Alabama football fans, and it comes for the word qirmiz, the insect that provided the dark red dye itself.

cipher

This word has various meanings in English, but the less common one of "zero" is directly from the Arabic sifr for naught(another synonym for "zero").

saphenous
This is an unusual medical word describing the two main superficial veins of the leg.

burnouse
From Arabic burnus, this is a hooded clock worn by Berbers and Arabs, and is just one big piece of cloth.

fakir

A poor man, derived from faqir. This word was used a bit in British-ruled India.

garble

This common English word comes from the Arabic word gharbala, to sift.

tazza
This is either a vase or a large, shallow cup which is placed on a pedestal. I'd like some Tazo tea in a golden tazza!

dragoman

An interpreter or translator - especially of Arabic, Persian, or Turkish, in the Near East(a term denoting the Ottoman Empire at its greatest point).

checkmate
You'd think this word for winning in chess was from English, but actually it's directly from the Arabic phrase sha'ah ma't - 'the king is dead.' Chess exercises your brain(to resign in chess you can simply drop the king)!

hegira

this is derived from hijrah- which means departure. And hegira means a journey, usually a dangerous one to escape from danger.

popinjay

Wow, multiple meanings here! First, the original one was a parrot(babagha). In British dialect it can be a woodpecker. A related, yet archaic, meaning is a fake parrot used as target practice(i.e., for archery/shooting).

The last meaning is the popular one - a vain, boastful/showy person.

As we know, civilizations tend to rise and fall, and during the Midieval times of Europe thankfully things weren't stagnant elsewhere. The Renaissance of Europe was at least partly fueled by the flowering of science and literature of the middle east(and Muslim territories) during the preceding centuries. It helps that the Middle East has been a major crossroad between East and West for millennia. Many loanwords came to us this way, especially in areas like astronomy, mathematics, and medicine.

Maybe one day you will visit Cairo, Tripoli, Damascus or Marrakech. Now you know a handful of cool words that originated over there!

sources:

Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary . CD-ROM Version 2.5. Merriam-Webster, Incorporated, 2000.
Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary. http://www.merriam-webster.com/.

Mark Rosenfelder. English Words from Arabic. http://www.zompist.com/arabic.html

List of Arabic loanwords in English - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Azimuth- Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.