English words of Arabic origins?
November 16, 2014 12:32 PM   Subscribe

I am looking for a complete list (online) of (a) English words of Arabic origins as well as (b) English words that are specifically about Arabic things. Miscellaneous words/lists are welcome too.

I've come across quite a few fascinating examples about English words of Arabic origin. Company names like Hayao Miyazaki's "Studio Ghibli" for instance, where the Italian noun "ghibli" is based on the Arabic name for the sirocco, or Mediterranean wind, the idea being the studio would "blow a new wind through the anime industry" (from Wikipedia). Another is the company name Adobe, which in Arabic refers to the kind of clay used as a building material, typically in the form of sun-dried bricks.
posted by cyrusw8 to Writing & Language (12 answers total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
Algebra!
posted by St. Peepsburg at 12:33 PM on November 16, 2014 [1 favorite]


Algorithm
posted by Obscure Reference at 12:35 PM on November 16, 2014 [2 favorites]


Alcohol

(Notice a pattern here? Many words starting with al come from Arabic)
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 12:38 PM on November 16, 2014 [2 favorites]


There's a Wikipedia list for this.
posted by brainmouse at 12:38 PM on November 16, 2014 [2 favorites]


Response by poster: Yes, Wikipedia has a lot of words but I'm looking for a more extensive list.
posted by cyrusw8 at 12:40 PM on November 16, 2014


In that case, how about the ~950 word long list on Wiktionary. You can back out of there to "Arabic languages" for even more.
posted by brainmouse at 12:48 PM on November 16, 2014 [1 favorite]


One of my favorites that I've heard while studying Arabic is "artichoke". There are two terms for "artichoke" in Arabic, the most common (and apparently distantly related to the english word) is al-kharshuuf (الخرشوف). But there is also 'ardii shaukii' (أرضي شوكي), meaning "earthy and prickly/spiny". Seems like it's too good to be true and just sounds like artichoke (bilingual play on words!), though I can't find more info on when the two-word term came about.
posted by Corduroy at 1:07 PM on November 16, 2014 [1 favorite]


(Or I guess "القرشوف" [al-qarshuuf], according to Wiktionary, though that word isn't in my dictionary)
posted by Corduroy at 1:11 PM on November 16, 2014


Haboob? Used all over the Southwest, brought back by soldiers who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan.
posted by WidgetAlley at 1:24 PM on November 16, 2014


The OED website will let you run a query on language origin, if you have access. Indeed, most online dictionaries which contain etymologies should let you do something alike.
posted by Thing at 1:52 PM on November 16, 2014 [2 favorites]


I think the oed is probably your best bet here.
posted by crazy with stars at 2:21 PM on November 16, 2014


It's not perfect, but this chart from Oxford Dictionaries made the rounds recently. The main problem with it is that it sometimes skips over languages that were key in transmission from Arabic into English, or it skips contributing languages, where a word that was originally Arabic maybe have come into English through multiple other languages. Also, it is misleading in that it seems that Italian was always the last stop before English; this is not so. It's simply Arabic + a list of languages that also got the word from Arabic + English, which may or may not have received the words from other languages and not directly from Arabic.
posted by Mo Nickels at 12:11 PM on November 17, 2014


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