Indian words

Early in the 17th century Britain began to take an interest in trade with India, and the influence of Indian languages on English vocabulary began. The period the British ruled the Indian subcontinent as a Crown possession, from 1858 to 1947, is known as the Raj [L18th], from the Hindi word rāj ‘state, government’, related to raja [M16th] ‘prince’, and it was this colonial rule that fixed many Indian words in the language.

 Some terms were consciously borrowed. In the 18th century a wealthy man who had made his fortune in India might be called a nabob [E17th], an Urdu word nawāb, which ultimately goes back to Arabic nuwwāb ‘governors’. Sahib [L17th], a polite form of address to a European man, also comes via Persian and Urdu from Arabic ṣāḥib ‘friend, lord’, while memsahib [M19th] for the wife of a sahib is simply a form of the English ma’am in front of sahib. However, other words have become so much a part of English that they have all but lost their Indian connections. On the domestic front, a bungalow [L17th] was originally a cottage built for a European settler in Bengal; it comes from Hindi baṅglā ‘belonging to Bengal’, also the meaning of bangla music; veranda [E18th] has a rather more convoluted history, being from Hindi varaṇḍā, borrowed in turn from Portuguese varanda ‘railing, balustrade’. A cot [M17th] is from Hindi khāṭ ‘bedstead, hammock’, and pyjamas [E19th] come from Urdu and Persian pāy ‘leg’ + jāma ‘clothing’. A cummerbund [E17th] is from Urdu and Persian kamar-band, from kamar ‘waist, loins’ and -bandi ‘band’, and rather than the formal evening dress of today was originally a sash worn by domestic workers and low-status office workers. Shampoo [M18th] from Hindi comes from cāṃpo! ‘press!’ and was a term for a massage in a Turkish bath before being transferred to washing hair in the mid 19th century. The patterned cloth chintz [E17th] first came into English as chint with plural chints, which was then changed to chintz; it comes from Hindi chīṃṭ ‘spattering, stain’. Although we get *curry from India, vindaloo [L19th] is a Goan form of a Portuguese dish made with vin d’alho ‘wine and garlic [sauce]’. Kedgeree is Hindi khichri, originally a dish made with rice and pulses.

 If the sahib wanted entertainment, he could go to a gymkhana [M19th], which in Victorian India meant a place with public sports facilities rather than just an equestrian event. The word is an alteration of Urdu gendḵānah ‘racket court’, the form influenced by ‘gymnastic’. He might go wearing jodhpurs [L19th], named after the form of trousers worn in the city of Jodhpur. Indoors he might drink a toddy [E17th], from Marathi tāḍī and Hindi tāṛī, referring to the variety of palm tree the drink was originally made from. By the mid 18th century English had adopted the word for a drink based on whisky or other spirit. Or he might play snooker [L19th], a form of billiards invented by army officers in India in the 1870s; the origin of the word is not known, but it may be no coincidence that it was also slang for a new cadet.

 The physical and social aspects of the subcontinent also influenced the vocabulary in use by the British. Jungle [L18th] conjures up images of tangled forest, but it comes via Hindi from Sanskrit jāṅgala ‘rough and arid (terrain)’ and was originally used by the British for uncultivated land. A pundit [M17th] gets his name from the Sanskrit paṇḍita ‘learned man’, while pariahs [E17th] were originally hereditary drummers, from Tamil paṛaiyar, before becoming low-caste. Juggernaut became a term for a large vehicle in the mid 19th century but was originally a Sanskrit term Jagannātha meaning ‘Lord of the World’, an aspect of the Hindu god Krishna whose giant statue was dragged through the streets in Orissa on a giant cart. Thug [E19th] also has a religious connection, for the original thug (from Hindi ṭhag ‘swindler, thief’) was a devotee of the goddess Kali, who waylaid and strangled victims, usually travellers, in a ritually prescribed manner. More peaceful was the yogi who practised yoga [M19th] the Sanskrit for ‘union’ and a distant relative of the English word yoke [OE]. Banyan [L16th] was not originally the term for a tree but came, via Portuguese, from the Gujarati vāṇiyo ‘man of the trading caste’; originally it meant a Hindu merchant but was transferred by Europeans in the mid 17th century to a particular tree under which some ‘banyans’ had built a pagoda, and hence to such trees in general.

 Not all the British in India were sahibs. As readers of Kipling will know, India was also full of British private soldiers and humble civilians. They too picked up words from the speakers of various Indian languages. Two have moved into standard English: chit [L18th] or chitty [L17th] from Hindi ciṭṭhī ‘note, pass’; and loot [E19th] from Hindi lūṭ, from Sanskrit luṇṭh- ‘rob’. Others have remained non-standard. These include Blighty [1900] for Britain, an alteration of Urdu bilāyatī, wilāyatī ‘foreign, European’ first used by soldiers in India but spread by the use of the term ‘Blighty one’ in the trenches of the First World War for a wound that would get you sent back ‘home’; choky [E17th] from Hindi caukī ‘customs or toll house’ but transferred to mean ‘prison’ by the mid 19th century; cushy [L19th] ‘easy, undemanding’ from Urdu ḵushī ‘pleasure’; doolally [E20th] originally doolally tap, Indian army slang, from Deolali, a town with a military sanatorium and transit camp, and Urdu tap ‘fever’, from the effects of often having to wait months for transport to Britain with nothing to do; and pukka [L17th] ‘genuine, excellent’ from Hindi pakkā ‘cooked, ripe, substantial’.

 See also badminton, check, chop, curry, factory, horde, persian words, posh, punch, romani words, sandalwood, snake, tank, umpteen.