List of English words of Arabic origin

A[edit]
admiral
أمير amīr, military commander. Amīr is common in medieval Arabic as a commander on land (not sea). In medieval Latin it has lots records as a specifically Muslim military leader oremir.[2] A Latin record of a different kind comes from Sicily in 1072, the year the Latins defeated the Arabs in Sicily at the capital city Palermo. In that year, after about 200 years of Arabic rule in Sicily, a new military governing official at Palermo was assigned as "Knight, to be for the Sicilians the amiratus", where -atus is a Latin grammar suffix. This title continued in mainly non-marine use over the next century among the Latins at Palermo, usually spelled am[m]iratus;[3] spelled amiraldus in year 1113 where -aldus is a Latin suffix that functions much the same as -atus;[4] ammiral year 1112 influenced by Latin suffix -alis. In 1178 (and earlier) the person holding the title amiratus at Palermo was put in charge of the navy of the Kingdom of Sicily.[3] After that start, the use of the word to mean an Admiral of the Sea was taken up in the maritime republic of Genoa starting in 1195 as amirato, and spread throughout the Latin Mediterranean in the 13th century.[3]Medieval Latin word-forms included ammiratus, ammirandus, amirallus, admiratus, admiralius,[2] while in late medieval French and English the usual word-forms were amiraland admiral.[5] The insertion of the letter 'd' was undoubtedly influenced by allusion to the word admire, a classical Latin word. [1]
adobe
الطوبة al-tūba | at-tūba,[6] the brick. The word is in a number of medieval Arabic dictionaries meaning "brick". The Arabic dictionary of Al-Jawhari dated about year 1000 made the comment that the Arabic word had come from the Coptic language.[7] The first record in a Western language is 12th-century Spanish adobe with the same meaning as today's, "sun-dried brick".[8] Other cases of Arabic 't' becoming medieval Spanish 'd' includees:Ajedrez, es:Algodón, es:Badana, es:Badea.[9] The word entered English from Mexico in the 18th and 19th centuries. [2]
afrit (mythology)
عفريت ʿifrīt, an ancient demon popularized by the 1001 Arabian Nights tales.[10]
albatross
The medieval Arabic source-word was probably الغطّاس al-ghattās which literally meant "the diver", and meant birds who caught fish by diving, and sometimes meant the diving waterbirds of the pelecaniform class, including cormorants.[11] From this or some other Arabic word, late medieval Spanish has alcatraz meaning pelecaniform-type large diving seabird.[11] From the Spanish, the word entered English in the later 16th century asalcatras with the same meaning, and it is also in Italian in the later 16th century asalcatrazzi with the same meaning.[12] The albatrosses are large diving seabirds that are only found in the southern hemisphere and the Pacific Ocean regions. Beginning in the 17th century, every European language adopted "albatros" with a 'b' for these birds, the 'b' having been mobilized from Latinate alba = "white". [3]
alchemy, chemistry
الكيمياء al-kīmiyā, alchemy, meaning in particular "studies about substances through which the generation of gold and silver may be artificially accomplished". In Arabic the word had its origin in a Greek alchemy word that had been in use in the early centuries AD in Alexandria in Egypt in Greek.[13] The Arabic word entered Latin as alchimia in the 12th century and was widely circulating in Latin in the 13th century.[14] In Latin the wordalchimia was strongly associated with the quest to make gold out of other metals but the scope of the word also covered the full range of what was then known about chemistry and metallurgy.[15] The late medieval Latin word-forms alchimicus = "alchemical" andalchimista = "alchemist" gave rise to the Latin word-forms chimicus and chimista beginning in the mid 16th century. The word-forms with and without the al- were synonymous up until the end of the 17th century.[16] [4]
alcohol
الكحل al-kohl, very finely powdered stibnite (Sb2S3) or galena (PbS) or any similar fine powder.[7] The word with that meaning entered Latin in the 13th century spelled alcohol. In Latin in the 14th and 15th centuries the sole meaning was a very fine-grained powder, made of any material.[17] In various cases this powder was obtained by crushing, but in a variety of other cases the powder was obtained by calcination or by sublimation & deposition, or occasionally by distillation. In the alchemy and medicine writerTheophrastus Paracelsus (died 1541), the alcohol powders produced by sublimations were viewed as kinds of distillates, and with that mindset he extended the word's meaning to distillate of wine. "Alcohol of wine" (ethanol) has its first known record in Paracelsus.[18]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."[19] [5]
alcove
القبّة al-qobba, "the vault" or cupola. That sense for the word is in medieval Arabic dictionaries,[7] and the same sense is documented in Spanish alcoba around 1275.[8] After semantically changing in later medieval Spanish,[20] alcoba begot French alcove, earliest known record 1646,[8] and French begot English. [6]
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 Egypt in about the 3rd century AD. Their ambix became the 9th-century Arabic al-anbīq, which became the 12th-century Latin alembicus.[21] [7]
alfalfa
الفصفصة al-fisfisa, alfalfa.[22] The Arabic entered medieval Spanish.[22] 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.[23] [8]
algebra
الجبر al-jabr, completing, or restoring broken parts. The word's mathematical use has its earliest record in Arabic in the title of the book "al-mukhtaṣar fī ḥisāb al-jabr wa al-muqābala", translatable as "The Compendium on Calculation by Restoring and Balancing", by the 9th-century mathematician Mohammed Ibn Musa 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.[24] [9]
algorithm, algorism
الخوارزمي al-khwārizmī, a short name for the mathematician Muhammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī (died c. 850). 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.[25] [10]
alidade
العضادة al-ʿiḍāda (from ʿiḍad, pivoting arm), the rotary dial for angular positioning on the Astrolabe surveying instrument used in astronomy. The word with that meaning was used by, e.g., the astronomers Abū al-Wafā' Būzjānī (died 998)[26] and Abu al-Salt (died 1134).[9] The word with the same meaning entered Latin in the Late Middle Ages in the context of Astrolabes.[27] Crossref azimuth, which entered the Western languages on the same pathway. [11]
alkali
القلي al-qalī | al-qilī, an alkaline material derived from the ashes of certain plants. Particularly plants that grew on salty soils—see glasswort and saltwort. Al-Jawhari (died 1003) said "al-qilī is obtained from glassworts".[7] In today's terms, the medieval al-qalī was mainly composed of sodium carbonate and potassium carbonate.[28] The Arabs used it as an ingredient in making glass and making soap. Earliest known record in the West is in a 13th-century Latin alchemy text, with the same meaning as the Arabic.[29] [12]
ambergris and possibly amber
عنبر ʿanbar, meaning ambergris, i.e. a waxy material produced in the stomach of sperm whales and used historically for perfumery. From Arabic sellers of ambergris, the word passed into the Western languages in the mid-medieval centuries as ambra 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 two meanings – ambergris and amber – then co-existed for more than four centuries. "Ambergris" was coined to eliminate the ambiguity (the color of ambergris is grey more often than not, and gris is French for grey). It wasn't until about 1700 that the ambergris meaning died out in English amber.[30] [13]
anil, aniline, polyaniline
النيل al-nīl | an-nīl,[6] 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 dye. 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.[31] [14]
apricot
البرقوق al-barqūq, apricot.[32] Arabic is in turn traceable back to Early Byzantine Greek and thence to classical Latin praecoqua, literally "precocious" and specifically precociously ripening peaches,[33] i.e. apricots.[9] The Arabic was passed onto the late medieval Spanish albarcoque, Catalan albercoc, Portuguese albricoque, all meaning apricot.[34]Early spellings in English included abrecok (1551), abrecox (1578), apricock (1593).[35][15]
arsenal
دار صناعة dār sināʿa, literally "house of manufacturing" but in practice in medieval Arabic it meant government-run manufacturing, usually for the military, most notably for the navy.[36] In the Italian maritime republics in the 12th century the word was adopted to designate a naval dockyard, a place for building ships and military armaments for ships, and repairing armed ships. In the later-medieval centuries the biggest such arsenal in Europe was the Arsenal of Venice. 12th century Italian-Latin has the spellings darsenaand arsena. In 14th-century Italian and Italian-Latin the spellings included terzana, arzana, arsana, arcenatus, tersanaia, terzinaia, darsena, and 15th century tarcenale, all meaning a shipyard and in many cases having naval building activity. In 16th century French and English an arsenal was either a naval dockyard or an arsenal, or both. In today's Frencharsenal continues to have the same dual meanings as in the 16th century.[37] [16]
artichoke
الخرشف al-kharshuf | الخرشوف al-kharshūf, artichoke. The word with that meaning has a number of records in medieval Andalusi and Maghrebi Arabic.[38] Spanish alcachofa (circa 1400), Spanish carchofa (1423), Spanish alcarchofa (1423),[39] Italian carciofjo (circa 1525)[8] are reasonably close to the Arabic precedent, and so are today's Spanishalcachofa, today's Italian carciofo. It is not clear how the word mutated to French artichault(1538), northern Italian articiocch (circa 1550),[8] northern Italian arcicioffo (16th century),[39] English archecokk (1531), English artochock (1542),[39] but all of the etymology dictionaries say it must be a mutation. [17]
assassin
حشاشين ḥashāshīn, an Arabic nickname for the Nizari Ismaili religious sect in the Levantduring the Crusades era. This sect carried out assassinations against chiefs of other sects, including Crusading Christians, and the story circulated throughout western Europe at the time (13th century and late 12th). In Latin, French & Italian, the sect was called theAssassini, and it is well understood why the word-form got phonetically changed from Arabic Hashāshīn to Latinate Assassini. Generalization of the sect's nickname to the meaning of any kind of assassin happened in Italian at the start of the 14th century. The Italian word entered French and English in the 16th century.[40] [18]
attar (of roses)
عطر ʿitr, perfume, aroma. The English word came from the Hindi/Urdu-speaking area of northeast India in the late 18th century and its source was the Hindi/Urdu atr | itr = "perfume",[41] which had come from the Persian ʿitr = "perfume", and the Persian had come medievally from the Arabic ʿitr. [19]
aubergine
البادنجان al-bādinjān, aubergine.[42] The plant is native to India. It was unknown to the ancient Greeks and Romans. It was introduced to the Mediterranean region by the medieval Arabs. The Arabic name entered Romance languages late medievally, from which comes today's Spanish berenjena = "aubergine". The Catalan albergínia = "aubergine" has records starting either 13th century[8] or early 14th century.[43] The Catalan was the parent of the French aubergine, which starts in the mid 18th century and which embodies a change from al- to au- that happened in French.[44] [20].
average
عوار ʿawār, a defect, or anything defective or damaged, including partially spoiled merchandise; plus عواري ʿawārī = "of or relating to ʿawār"; and عوارية ʿawārīa (slimly attested wordform), relating to a state of partial damage.[45] Within the Western languages the word's history begins in medieval sea-commerce on the Mediterranean. 12th century Genoa Latin avaria meant "damage, loss and unexpected expenses arising during a merchant sea voyage"; and the same meaning for avaria is in Provence in 1210, Barcelona in 1258 and Florence in the late 13th.[8] 15th century French avarie had the same meaning, and it begot English "averay" (1491) and English "average" (1502) with the same meaning. Today, Italian avaria, Catalan avaria and French avarie still have the primary meaning of "damage". The huge transformation of the meaning in English 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 started in the mid 18th century, and started in English.[46] [21].
azimuth
السموت al-sumūt | as-sumūt,[6] the paths, the directions, the azimuths. The word's origin is in medieval Arabic astronomy and especially the Arabic version of the Astrolabe instrument.[47] The first record in English is in the 1390s in Geoffrey Chaucer's Treatise on the Astrolabe, which used the word many times.[48] The first in any Western language is in the 1270s in Spanish as acimut in a set of astronomy books that took heavily from Arabic sources, the Libros del saber de astronomía del rey Alfonso X de Castilla.[8] [22]