List of English words of Arabic origin (A-Z)

The following English words have been acquired either directly from Arabic or else indirectly by passing from Arabic into other languages and then into English. Most entered one or more of the Romance languages before entering English.

To qualify for this list, a word must be reported in etymology dictionaries as having descended from Arabic. A handful of dictionaries has been used as the source for the list.^[1] Words associated with the Islamic religion are omitted; for Islamic words, see Glossary of Islam. Archaic and rare words are also omitted. A bigger listing including many words very rarely seen in English is available at Wiktionary dictionary.

Loanwords listed in alphabetical order[edit]

• List of English words of Arabic origin (A-B)
• List of English words of Arabic origin (C-F)
• List of English words of Arabic origin (G-J)
• List of English words of Arabic origin (K-M)
• List of English words of Arabic origin (N-S)
• List of English words of Arabic origin (T-Z)
• List of English words of Arabic origin: Addenda for certain specialist vocabularies

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 or emir.^[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 reflecting 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 amiral and 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 Spanishadobe with the same meaning as today's, "sun-dried brick".^[8] Other cases of Arabic 't' becoming medieval Spanish 'd' include es: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 presumably meant the diving waterbirds of thepelecaniform class, including cormorants.^[11] From this or some other Arabic word, late medieval Spanish has alcatraz meaning a pelecaniform-type bird.^[8][11] From the Spanish, the word entered English in the later 16th century as alcatras meaning pelecaniform bird, and it is also in Italian in the later 16th century as alcatrazzi with the same meaning.^[12] The albatross birds are only found in ocean regions of the southern hemisphere and the Pacific. 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 an alchemy word that had been in use in the early centuries AD in Greek in Alexandria in Egypt.^[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 word alchimia 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" and alchimista = "alchemist" gave rise to the Latin word-forms chimicus andchimista 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, finely powdered stibnite and any similar fine powder.^[7] The word with that meaning entered Latin in the 13th century; and in 14th-century Latin it meant any finely ground and sifted material.^[17] 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", i.e. ethanol, started with the alchemy and medicine writer Paracelsus(died 1541).^[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] Crossref kohl on the list. [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 alcobaaround 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-muqābalawere 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 "fromKhwarizm". 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 bothalgorismus 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]

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.^[28] [12]

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.^[29] 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.^[30] [13]

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 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.^[31] [14]

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.^[32] [15]

apricot

البرقوق al-barqūq, apricot.^[33] Arabic is in turn traceable back to Byzantine Greek and thence to classical Latin praecoqua, literally "precocious" and specifically precociously ripening peaches,^[34] i.e. apricots.^[9] The Arabic was passed onto the 14th-century Portuguese albricoque and Catalan albercoc = "apricot".^[8] Early spellings in English included abrecok (1551), abrecox (1578), apricock (1593).^[35] [16]

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. In 14th-century Italian and Italian-Latin the spellings were diverse and 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 French arsenal continues to have the same dual meanings as in the 16th century.^[37] [17]

artichoke 

الخرشف al-kharshuf | الخرشوف al-kharshūf, artichoke. The word with that meaning has a number of records in medieval Andalusian Arabic.^[38] Spanishalcachofa (circa 1400), Spanish carchofa (1423), Spanish alcarchofa (1513),^[39] Italian carciofjo (circa 1525)^[8] are reasonably close to the Arabic precedent, and so are today's Spanish alcachofa, today's Italian carciofo. It is not clear how the word mutated to French artichault (1538), northern Italianarticiocch (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. [18]

assassin 

حشاشين ḥashāshīn, an Arabic nickname for the Nizari Ismaili religious sect in the Levant during the Crusades era. This sect carried out assassinations against chiefs of other sects, including Christians, and the story circulated throughout western Europe at the time (13th century and late 12th). Generalization of the sect's nickname to the meaning of any kind of assassin happened in Italian not long afterwards (about 1300). The Italian word entered French and English in the 16th century.^[40] [19]

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. [20]

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 Frenchaubergine, which starts in the mid 18th century and which embodies a change from al- to au- that happened in French.^[44] [21].

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.^[8] In the West, the word's early usage was in sea-commerce on the Mediterranean, and its meaning was a lot different from what it is in English today. The Arabic parent word was عوار ʿawār = "a defect, or anything defective or damaged" and عوارية ʿawārīa = "defective, damaged or partially spoiled goods".^[45] 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.^[46] [22].

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] [23]

azure (color), lazurite (mineral) 

لازورد lāzward | lāzūard, lazurite and lapis lazuli, a rock with a vivid blue color. The word is ultimately from "Lajward" the place-name of a large deposit of this blue rock in northeastern Afghanistan. Latin had lazurium and azurium for this rock, with records starting in the 9th century.^[8] Late medieval English hadazure and lazurium for the rock.^[49] From the rock, azure was a color-name in all the later-medieval Western languages. In today's Russian, Ukrainian and Polish the color-name is spelled with the letter 'L' (лазурь, lazur). [24]

B[edit]

benzoin, benzene 

لبان جاوي lubān jāwī, benzoin resin, literally "frankincense of Java". Benzoin is a natural resin from an Indonesian tree. Arab sea-merchants shipped it to the Middle East for sale as perfumery and incense in the later medieval centuries. It first came to Europe in the early 15th century. The European name benzoinis a great mutation of the Arabic name lubān jāwī and the linguistic factors that caused the mutation are well understood.^[50] Among European chemists, benzoin resin was the original source for benzoic acid, which became the source for the 19th-century benzene. [25]

bezoar

بازهر bāzahr (from Persian pâdzahr), a type of hard bolus, containing calcium compounds, sometimes formed in the stomachs of goats (and other ruminants). Today in English a bezoar is a medical and veterinary term for a ball of indigestible material that collects in the stomach and fails to pass through the intestines. Goat bezoars were recommended by medieval Arabic medical writers for use as antidotes to poisons, particularly arsenic poisons. That is how the word first entered Latin medical vocabulary.^[51] [26]

borax, borate, boron 

بورق būraq, various salts (including borax) used as fluxes in metalworking and as cleaning agents.^[52] Borax | Baurach was adopted in Latin in the 12th century^[8] meaning salts used for fluxing metals. The particular salt that the word could refer to was varied and unsettled in Europe until the 18th century.^[52]Elemental boron was isolated and named from borax in the early 19th. The variant of borax called Tincalconite gets its name from medieval Arabic تنكارtinkār = "borax" conjoined with ancient Greek konis = "powder".^[52] [27]

Addendum for words that may or may not be of Arabic ancestry[edit]

almanac 

This word's earliest surviving record is in Latin in 1267, where it meant a set of tables detailing movements of astronomical bodies, and was spelled almanac. A lot of medieval Arabic writings on astronomy exist, and they don't use the word almanac. (One of the words they do use is "zīj"; another is "taqwīm"). The 19th-century Arabic-word-origin experts Engelmann & Dozy said about almanac: "To have the right to argue that it is of Arabic origin, one must first find a candidate word in Arabic" and they found none.^[9] The origin remains obscure.^[53] A phonetically suitable candidate word could be المناخ al-munākh meaning "climate", but it has no known semantic connection. [28]

amalgam, amalgamate

This word is first seen in the West in 13th-century Latin alchemy texts, where it meant an amalgam of mercury with another metal, and it was spelledamalgama. It lacks a plausible origin in terms of Latin precedents. In medieval Arabic records a word الملغم al-malgham with suitable meaning is rare but does exist. Today a number of dictionaries say the Latin was from this Arabic, or probably was. But other dictionaries are unconvinced, and say the origin of the Latin is obscure.^[54] [29]

antimony 

This word was first used by Constantinus Africanus (died circa 1087), who was a widely circulated author in later-medieval Latin (crossref borage). His spelling was "antimonium"^[8] and his meaning was antimony sulfide. It may be a Latinized form of some Arabic name, but no clear precedent in Arabic has been found. The substance Constantinus called antimonium was well-known to the medieval Arabs under the names ithmid and kohl and well-known to the Latins under the name stibi | stibium. [30]

borage (plant), Boraginaceae (botanical family) 

The borage plant is native to the Mediterranean area. It was known to the ancient Greeks and Romans under other names. The name borage is from medieval Latin borago | borrago | borragine. The name is first seen in Constantinus Africanus who was an 11th-century Latin medical writer and translator whose native language was Arabic and who drew from Arabic medical sources. Many of today's etymology dictionaries suppose the name to be from Arabic and the most popular theory is that Constantinus took it from أبو عرق abū ʿaraq = "sweat inducer", because tea made from borage leaves has a sweat-inducing (diaphoretic) effect and the word would be pronounced būaraq in Arabic.^[8] However, in medieval Arabic no such name is on record for borage, and phonetically the match between būaraq and borrago is weak.^[55] [31]

Footnotes[edit]

1. Jump up^ The dictionaries used to compile the list are these: Centre National de Ressources Textuelles et Lexicales: Etymologies, Online Etymology Dictionary, Random House Dictionary, Concise Oxford English Dictionary, American Heritage Dictionary, Collins English Dictionary, Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Arabismen im Deutschen: lexikalische Transferenzen vom Arabischen ins Deutsche, by Raja Tazi (year 1998), A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (a.k.a. "NED") (published in pieces between 1888 and 1928), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English (year 1921) by Ernest Weekley. Footnotes for individual words have supplementary other references. The most frequently cited of the supplementary references is Glossaire des mots espagnols et portugais dérivés de l'arabe (year 1869) by Reinhart Dozy.
2. ^ Jump up to:^a b A set of usage examples of medieval Latin amiræus, ammiratus, ammirandus, amirallus, admiratus, admiralius is in Du Cange's Glossary of Medieval Latin. In medieval Latin the word carrying the meaning of a specifically Muslim commander starts earlier than the meaning of a naval commander. The same is true in Old French. The earliest in Old French is in a well-known long ballad about war-battles between Christians and Muslims, the Chanson de Roland, dated circa 1100, which contains about three dozen instances of amirail or amiralz (plural) meaning exclusively a Muslim military leader on land – ref. Two late 12th century examples with the same meaning are cited in the dictionary of Anglo-Norman French – ref. In French, the word meaning admiral of the sea has its first known record circa 1208 in the Crusader chronicler Geoffrey of Villehardouin (died circa 1212), who spelled it admiral. Later in medieval French, it is commonly spelled both amiral and admiral, with both spellings having both meanings – Amiral | Admiral @ Dictionnaire du Moyen Français. The same is true in late medieval English; see Amiral | Admiral @ Middle English Dictionary.
3. ^ Jump up to:^a b c An in-depth treatment of the origin and early history of the Western word "admiral" is in the book Amiratus-Aμηρας: L'Emirat et les Origines de l'Amirauté, XIe-XIIIe Siècles, by Léon Robert Ménager, year 1960, 255 pages, including chapter headed "Les émirs siculo-normands de la court de Palerme" and chapter headed "La naissance du terme "amiral" ". The article "Le point sur l'origine du mot amiral", by Omar Bencheikh, 5 pages, year 2003 (published by Bulletin de la SELEFA),ONLINE, is primarily interested in showing that the Arabic amīr = "commander" was not in use meaning a sea commander in Arabic at the time when the Latins started using the word in the sense of sea commander in the 12th and 13th centuries. This is consistent with Ménager's documentation that the word evolved as a title of governance within Norman Sicily from an original meaning of a commander on land in Norman Sicily. More on the 12th century amiratus in Norman Sicily is contained in the book The Administration of the Norman Kingdom of Sicily, by Hiroshi Takayama, year 1993. And more notes on the word's early history in the West are inArabismi Medievali di Sicilia, by Girolamo Caracausi, year 1983 on pages 102-105 (in Italian) and Arabismen im Deutschen, by Raja Tazi, year 1998 on pages 184-186 (in German). A 1963 book review of Ménager's book has some info about the subject of the book in English in Journal Speculum, Vol 38 number 2, pages 371-373.
4. Jump up^ The Latin suffix -aldus | -aldi is discussed in An etymological dictionary of the French language, by A. Brachet, translated to English by G. W. Kitchin, year 1873, on page cix. The Sicilian Latin amiraldi year 1113 is cited in Arabismi Medievali di Sicilia, by Girolamo Caracausi, year 1983 on page 105.
5. Jump up^ Amiral | Admiral @ Middle English Dictionary and Amiral | Admiral @ Dictionnaire du Moyen Français.
6. ^ Jump up to:^a b c Arabic al- = "the". In Arabic where tūba means brick, "the brick" is written al-tūba but universally pronounced "at-tūba". Similarly, the written al-sumūt ("the paths") is always pronounced "as-sumūt". Similarly, al-nīl is always pronounced "an-nīl". This pronunciation applies to al- in front of about half of the Arabic consonants. In front of the other half the al- is pronounced al-.
7. ^ Jump up to:^a b c d A number of large dictionaries were written in Arabic during medieval times. Searchable copies of nearly all of the main medieval Arabic dictionaries are online at Baheth.info and/or AlWaraq.net. One of the most esteemed of the dictionaries is Ismail ibn Hammad al-Jawhari's "Al-Sihah" which is dated around and shortly after year 1000. The biggest is Ibn Manzur's "Lisan Al-Arab" which is dated 1290 but most of its contents were taken from a variety of earlier sources, including 9th- and 10th-century sources. Often Ibn Manzur names his source then quotes from it. Therefore, if the reader recognizes the name of Ibn Manzur's source, a date considerably earlier than 1290 can often be assigned to what is said. A list giving the year of death of a number of individuals who Ibn Manzur quotes from is in Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon, volume 1, page xxx (year 1863). Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon contains much of the main contents of the medieval Arabic dictionaries in English translation. At AlWaraq.net, in addition to searchable copies of medieval Arabic dictionaries, there are searchable copies of a large number of medieval Arabic texts on various subjects.
8. ^ Jump up to:^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n} More details at CNRTL.fr Etymologie in French language. Centre National de Ressources Textuelles et Lexicales (CNRTL) is a division of the French National Centre for Scientific Research.
9. ^ Jump up to:^a b c d Glossaire des mots espagnols et portugais dérivés de l'arabe by R. Dozy & W.H. Engelmann. 430 pages. Published in 1869.
10. Jump up^ OxfordDictionnaries.com, Merriam-Webster.com.
11. ^ Jump up to:^a b Several bird-names in Spanish are established as having entered Spanish from Arabic during the medieval era. They include today's Spanish alcaraván = "curlewbird" from medieval Arabic al-karawān = "curlew bird" and today's Spanish zorzal = "thrush and similar bird" from medieval Arabic zurzūr = "starling bird". The late medieval Spanish alcatraz = "seafish-catching large bird", such as pelican or cormorant or gannet bird, is presumed by everybody to be from an Arabic word. But it is not very clear what the Arabic word was. On looking at candidate words, Arabic al-ghattās = "the diver" (from verb غطس ghatas, to dive in water), implying a diving pelecaniform bird, is the one favored today by the dictionaries Concise OED, American Heritage, Merriam-Webster, CNRTL.fr, and some others. In modern Arabic al-ghattās is a grebe (a diving waterbird) and also means a human skin-diver. This candidate word has the problem that the phonetic alterations involved in moving from al-ghattās to alcatraz are irregular and unusual: In Iberian Romance loanwords from Arabic, a conversion of gh- to c- is very rare, and an insertion of -r- is uncommon. The candidate favored by older dictionaries (including the dictionaries by Devic 1876, Skeat 1888, Weekley 1921) is Arabic al-qādūs = "bucket of a water wheel (hopper)", which certainly became Portuguese alcatruz well-documented with the same meaning, which in turn, it is speculatively proposed, became Portuguese and Spanishalcatraz = "a pelican with a bucket-like beak". One problem with this idea is that, although alcatraz has records meaning pelican, it also has records meaningcormorant and in the 16th century frigatebird and also gannet, which are large diving seabirds without a bucket-like beak. (These records are acknowledged by Devic (1876) and his followers). Moreover the word's early records have no highlighting of a bucket-like beak. The very earliest known record, which is in Spanish in year 1386, says "birds that maintain themselves on fish such as sea-eagles and alcatraces and other birds of the sea", and a relatively early record in Spanish at around 1440 speaks of "...pigeons and vultures and alcatrazes" – cited in Los Arabismos del Castellano en la Baja Edad Media, by Felipe Maíllo Salgado, 3rd edition 1998, on page 230. The fact that al-qādūs (the waterwheel bucket) is certainly the progenitor of alcatruz (the waterwheel bucket) lends phonetic support to the view that al-ghattās (the diving waterbird) can be the progenitor of alcatraz (the pelecaniform-type diving waterbird). Some more discussion is in Maíllo Salgado's book in Spanish.
12. Jump up^ Alcatras in New English Dictionary on Historical Principles.
13. Jump up^ During the early centuries AD, the Greeks in Egypt developed new alchemical and distillation methods. These were not acquired by the Late Classical Latins and they were unknown to the early medieval Latins. The later-medieval Latins acquired the methods in the 12th century from the Arabs, who had acquired them from the Greeks. The parent of the Arabic word al-kīmīā was a Late Greek word chymeia = "art of alloying metals, alchemy", which was used in Greek in Alexandria in Egypt in the writings of the alchemist Zosimos (4th century AD) and the Zosimos commentator Olympiodoros (5th or 6th century AD) – ref: Liddell-Scott-Jones. Zosimos and other Alexandrian Greek alchemy writers were translated to Arabic during the early centuries of Arabic literature – ref: Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums, Band IV: Alchimie-Chemie, Botanik-Agrikultur. Bis ca. 430 H., by Fuat Sezgin, year 1971 (including pages 74-76). Distillation was the most important of the chemical techniques that were known to the Greeks of Late Antiquity, and known to the medieval Arabs, and unknown to the early medieval Latins. A Short History of the Art of Distillation, by Robert James Forbes, year 1948, "Chapter II: The Alexandrian chemists" and "Chapter III: The Arabs" and "Chapter IV: The [Latin] Middle Ages".
14. Jump up^ In Latin, the earliest records for the word alchemy are dated about 1140 to 1145 – ref: Alchimie @ CNRTL.fr and The Secrets of Alchemy by Lawrence M. Principe, year 2012, on pages 51-53. A century later, Vincent de Beauvais (died 1264) compiled a general-purpose encyclopedia about all subjects. He could not read Arabic and did not have any particular interest in alchemy, but for his encyclopedia he was able to copy alchemy material from several Arabic books that were available to him in Latin translation – ref: Les sources alchimiques de Vincent de Beauvais by Sébastien Moureau, year 2012, 113 pages.
15. Jump up^ "Alchemy vs. Chemistry" by William R. Newman and Lawrence M. Principe, in journal Early Science and Medicine Vol. 3, No. 1 (year 1998), pages 32-65. Reiterated more briefly in Alchemy and the Quest to Perfect Nature, by William R. Newman, year 2004, preface page XII Terminology Note.
16. Jump up^ Further information is at Etymology of the word "chemistry". See also "Alchemy vs. Chemistry" by William R. Newman and Lawrence M. Principe, in journal Early Science and Medicine Vol. 3, No. 1 (year 1998), pages 32-65.
17. Jump up^ An alcohol of antimony sulfide (stibnite) is in Spanish with date 1278 – ref: CNRTL.fr – and in Latin with date 13th century – ref: Raja Tazi 1998. An alcofol of eggshells and an alcofol of iron sulfide (marcasite) are in a medical book by Guy de Chauliac in Latin in 1363 – ref: MED. In these cases alcohol | alcofol meant a substance that had been crushed into a very fine powder. A medieval use for such powder was in eye cleaning treatments for eye complaints (see collyrium). A Latin medical dictionary dated 1292 defined "alcohol" solely as "a powder for an eyewash" – Simon of Genoa's Synonyma Medicinae.
18. Jump up^ Entry on "Alkohol" in Alchemie: Lexikon einer hermetischen Wissenschaft, by C. Priesner and K. Figala, year 1998 page 43. Likewise in A Short History of the Art of Distillation, by R.J. Forbes (1948), year 1970 page 107. Likewise in Makers of Chemistry, by E.J. Holmyard, year 1931 page 111.
19. Jump up^ "Alcohol" in N. Bailey's English Dictionary, year 1726.
20. Jump up^ "Alcoba" in Iberoromanische Arabismen im Bereich Urbanismus und Wohnkultur, by Y. Kiegel-Keicher, year 2005 pages 314-319.
21. Jump up^ Book A Short History of the Art of Distillation, by Robert James Forbes, year 1948, including pages 36-37 for the word alembic.
22. ^ Jump up to:^a b The 12th century Andalusian Arabic agriculture writer Ibn Al-Awwam goes into detail about how to cultivate alfalfa and his name for alfalfa is al-fisfisa – ref, ref. The 13th-century Arabic dictionary Lisan al-Arab says al-fisfisa is cultivated as an animal feed and consumed in both fresh and dried form – فصفصة @ Baheth.info. In medieval Arabic another name for alfalfa was al-qatt (قتت @ Baheth.info and Pierre Guigues, year 1905). But al-fisfisa appears to have been the most common name for alfalfa. For example the entry for al-qatt in the 11th-century dictionary al-Sihāh says al-qatt is another word for al-fisfisa without saying what the latter is. Some medieval Andalusian Arabic sources spell it al-fasfasa (e.g.). In mutation from the Andalusian al-fasfasa, early records in Spanish have it spelled alfalfez as reported by Reinhart Dozy year 1869. Old records in Catalan have it as alfáffeç and alfaç (where ç is s), meaning alfalfa, as reported by Federico Corriente year 2008.
23. Jump up^ Alfalfa seeds were imported to California from Chile in the 1850s; history of alfalfa.
24. Jump up^ An Arabic copy of Al-Khwarizmi's algebra book is at ref. Historical information on the Latin term "algebra" is in "Robert of Chester's Latin Translation of the Algebra of Al-Khowarizmi: with an introduction, critical notes and an English version", by Louis Charles Karpinski, 200 pages, year 1915; downloadable. The earliest Latin translation of the book of algebra of Al-Khwarizmi was by Robert of Chester and the year was 1145. Centuries later in some Latin manuscripts this particular translation carried the Latin title Liber Algebrae et Almucabola. But the translation of 1145 did not carry that title originally, nor did it use the term algebrae in the body of the text. Instead it used the Latin word "restoration" as a loan-translation of al-jabr. Another 12th-century Latin translation of the same book, by Gerard of Cremona, borrowed the Arabic term in the form aliabre and iebra where the Latin 'i' is representing Arabic letter 'j'. In year 1202 in Latin the mathematician Leonardo of Pisa wrote a chapter involving the title Aljebra et Almuchabala where Latin 'j' is pronounced 'y'. Leonardo of Pisa had been influenced by an algebra book of essentially same title in Arabic byAbū Kāmil Shujāʿ ibn Aslam (died 930). In Arabic mathematics the term "al-jabr wa al-muqābala" has its first surviving record with Al-Khwarizmi (died 850), though Al-Khwarizmi gives signs that he did not originate it himself (ref, pages viii - x). Other algebra books with titles having this phrase were written by Al-Karaji a.k.a. Al-Karkhi (died circa 1029), Umar al-Khayyam (died 1123), and Ibn al-Banna (died 1321). Al-Khwarizmi's algebraic method was the same as the method of Diophantus of Alexandria, who wrote in the 3rd century AD in Greek. Diophantus's algebra book was in circulation in Arabic from the 10th century onward, and was known to Al-Karkhi(ref), but was not known to Al-Khwarizmi (see refs below). At the time when the Latins started to learn mathematics from Al-Khwarizmi and from other Arabic sources in the later 12th century, the Latins had no knowledge of the mathematics of Diophantus nor of similar other Late Greek sources. Refs: Karpinski pages 7, 19, 24, 33, 42, 65-66, 67, 159; and Encyclopaedia of Islamic Science and Scientists volume 1 (year 2005); and "The Influence of Arabic Mathematics on the Medieval West"by André Allard in Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science, Volume 2 (year 1996); and The Algebra of Mohammed ben Musa [al-Khwarizmi], by Frederic Rosen year 1831 preface pages viii - x; and Diophantus's Arithmetica (in English), with notes on its dissemination history by Thomas Heath, year 1910. In the late medieval Western languages the word "algebra" also had a medical sense, "restoration of broken body parts especially broken bones" – ref: MED. This medical sense was entirely independent of the mathematical sense. It came from the same Arabic word by a different route.
25. Jump up^ In late medieval Latin, the introductory books about the Hindu-Arabic numeral system usually had the word algorismus in their title. The most popular such book was the one by Johannes de Sacrobosco apparently – Karpinski year 1915, page 16. "Algorithm" was a new spelling in the late 17th century, based on the model of the word Logarithm, with the "arithm" taken from ancient Greek arithmos = "arithmetic" and the "algor" descended from medieval Latin algorismus = "Hindu–Arabic numeral system". Algorithm simply meant the methods of the decimal number system until the late 19th century, at which point the word was practically obsolete, but then it was saved from oblivion by an expansion of the meaning to cover any systematic codified procedure in mathematics. Ernest Weekley (1921); Word Origins by John Ayto (2005).
26. Jump up^ Dictionnaire Étymologique Des Mots Français D'Origine Orientale, by L. Marcel Devic, year 1876.
27. Jump up^ Reinhart Dozy (1869) noted that alhidada = "alidade" is in Spanish in the 1270s in a set of astronomy books that were largely derived from Arabic sources, the Libros del saber de astronomía del rey Alfonso X de Castilla, where alhidada is a very frequent word – ref. Nevertheless the word is hard to find in astronomy books in Latin until the 15th century. In Latin in year 1523 an introduction to astrolabes says: "Alhidada, an Arabic word, is a dial which turns and moves on the surface of an [astrolabe] instrument." – ref. In 18th century English, Bailey's English Dictionary defined "alidada" as "the ruler or label that moves on the center of an astrolabe, quadrant, etc., and carries the sight." – ref.
28. Jump up^ Until the late 19th century the alizarin dye was made from the roots of the madder plant, aka Rubia tinctorum plant. (Today alizarin is made in pure synthetic form). Dye-making from the madder root was common in medieval and early modern Europe. The word alizari[n] is only on record from the early 19th century. In France in year 1831 the official dictionary of the French language defined "izari" as "madder from the Levant" and flagged it as a recent word – Ref. It seems that an expansion of exports of madder from the Levant to western Europe may have occurred in the early 19th century – Ref. But (1) the Arabic word for madder was a completely different word; (2) the Arabic al-ʿaṣāra = "the juice" is very rarely or not at all used in Arabic in any sense of a dye; and (3) the way you get the dyestuff from the madder root is by drying the root, followed by milling the dried root into a powder – not by juicing or squeezing. So the Arabic verb ʿaṣar = "to squeeze" is semantically off-target, as well as being unattested in the relevant sense. Also the earliest known records are in French and it is not natural for an Arabic 'ṣ' to be converted to a French 'z' instead of a French 's' – Ref. Regarding the Spanish word alizari the experts Dozy & Engelmann say it looks Arabic but they can find no progenitor for it in Arabic –Ref: (year 1869) (page 144). In 1826, chemist Pierre Jean Robiquet discovered in madder root two distinct molecules with dye properties. The one producing a rich red he called "alizarin" and it soon entered all major European languages as a scientific word. Robiquet says in his 1826 research report: "regarding this new [red] entity coming from the neutral-coloured substance, we propose the name alizarin, from alizari, a term used in commerce for the entire madder root." – Ref: (year 1826)(page 411).
29. Jump up^ The medieval al-qalī was obtained from glasswort plants, i.e. succulent flowering plants that grow where water is salty. The plants contain high levels of sodium. When the plants are burned, much of the sodium ends up as sodium carbonate. Another major component in the ashes is potassium carbonate, aka potash, which is the largest component in the ashes of plants in general; plus the ashes contained some calcium compounds, plus various minor components. Medievally these plants were collected at seashores and other saline places, and the plants were burned for their ashes. Glassmaking was the main thing the ashes were used for (also used for making soap). Non-salty-plant ashes were usable in making glass but the results were inferior. Analysis of the chemical composition of ancient glass from the Mediterranean region indicates that the ashes of glasswort plants (rich in sodium carbonate) were used as an ingredient in making glass thousands of years ago;Ancient Glass: An Interdisciplinary Exploration, by Julian Henderson, year 2013.
30. Jump up^ As per CNRTL.fr the earliest record of "alkali" in the West is in the 13th-century Latin alchemy text Liber Luminis Luminum, the authorship and/or translation of which is attributed to Michael Scotus, who had somewhere learned Arabic. The Liber Luminis Luminum is a 13th-century composite work drawn from multiple sources and possibly dates from later than Michael Scotus, who died in the early 1230s. Its text is online in Latin as Appendix III of The Life and Legend of Michael Scot and some of its history is in "The Ars alchemie: the first Latin text on practical alchemy", by A. Vinciguerra, year 2009. Records of "alkali" are in the English language from the later 14th century on – ref: MED. The word is also in Italian in the 14th century – ref: TLIO (in Italian). The earliest French is 1509. CNRTL.fr cites a book by Guy de Chauliac using the word "alkali" in France in 1363, but that was in Latin, and the subsequent translations of Chauliac's book into French did not use the Latin word – ref: DMF, ref: French Chauliac. The first record in Spanish is in 1555 as per Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico. The origin of the Arabic word al-qalī is most often guessed to be from the Arabic root قلى qalā = "to fry".
31. Jump up^ Early records of the English "amber" are quoted in MED and NED. The English is from French. Some very early records in medieval Latin are given at "ambre #2" @ CNRTL.fr. For the word in medieval Arabic see عنبر @ Baheth.info. In the medieval era, ambergris mostly came from the shores of the Indian ocean (especially the western shores of India) and it was brought to the Mediterranean region by Arab traders, who called it ʿanbar (also ʿambar) and that is the parent word of the medieval Latin ambra (also ambar) with the same meaning. The word did not mean amber at any time in medieval Arabic. Meanwhile in the medieval era, amber mostly came from the Baltic Sea region of northern Europe. One can imagine in the abstract that a word of the form ambra meaning amber could be brought to Latin Europe by traders from the Baltic region. But the historical records are without any evidence for that. The records just show that the Latin word began with one meaning (ambergris) and later had two meanings (ambergris and amber).
32. Jump up^ Anil and Aniline in NED (English). Anil in Raja Tazi year 1998 pages 190–192 (German). Anil in CNRTL.fr (French). Añil in DRAE (Spanish). In medieval Arabic the word had the forms al-nīl and al-nīlaj – النيلج @ Baheth.info.
33. Jump up^ Arabic al-barqūq means plum nowadays. Ibn al-Baitar lived in the 13th century in both the Maghreb and Syria. He wrote that the word meant apricot in the Maghreb and a species of plum in Syria – ref: Dozy, year 1869. In the medieval dictionary of Fairuzabadi, al-burqūq was an apricot – ref: برقوق @ Baheth.info.
34. Jump up^ Reported in An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, by Walter W. Skeat, year 1888. Downloadable.
35. Jump up^ "Apricot" in NED (year 1888).
36. Jump up^ Medieval Arabic dār sināʿa was a manufacturing operation of the State, such as working the gold and silver of the sovereign, making weapons for the sovereign's military, or constructing and equipping warships – "Dār al-Ṣināʿa" in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd Edition, edited by P. Bearman et al., published by Brill. In the 10th century Al-Masudi wrote that "Rhodes is currently a dār sināʿa where the Byzantine Greeks build their war-ships" – Al-Masudi's 10th century Arabic. In the 14th century Ibn Batuta wrote that soon after Gibraltar had been retaken by Muslims from Christians in 1333 a "dār sinaʿa" was established at Gibraltar as a part of military strengthening there – Ibn Batuta's 14th century Arabic. The historian Ibn Khaldoun (died 1406) quotes an order of the Caliph Abdalmelic (died 705) to build at Tunis adār sināʿa for the construction of everything necessary for the equipment and armament of seagoing vessels – noted by Engelmann and Dozy 1869.
37. Jump up^ English "arsenal" in NED (year 1888). More in French at CNRTL.fr and Dozy year 1869. More in Italian at Arabismi Medievali di Sicilia by Girolamo Caracausi (year 1983) and Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (TLIO). And in German at Raja Tazi year 1998. From the port city of Pisa in Italian comes the formtersanaia (date 1313-23), tersanaja (1343), tersonaja (1385) where Italian j is pronounced y, terzinaia (later 14th century) – ref: CNRTL , TLIO. This form from 14th century Pisa has basically the same meaning as the earlier Italian darsena (12th century) and Italian arsana (12th century), but looks independently influenced by the Arabic dār sināʿa, and not evolved out of darsena | arsana. The great majority of today's dictionaries take the view that the Arabic parent of arsenal was borrowed from Arabic in the Italian maritime republics. Not in Iberia. The Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan word arsenal is a borrowing from the Italian (and French). On the other hand the Spanish word atarazana carries a more diverse sense of manufacturing than the naval manufacturing of the Italian, and its form (including its leading at- and its vowel after 'r', which reflect the Arabic definite article) is not found in any of the Italian variants, so it is understood to be from the same Arabic independently – see e.g.Federico Corriente year 2008.
38. Jump up^ Medieval records of kharshuf | kharshūf (also harshaf) meaning artichoke are cited in Corriente's A Dictionary of Andalusi Arabic, year 1997 page 153 and the dictionary explains the abbreviations it uses for its sources at pages xiii - xvii. The Andalusian Arab Ibn Baklarish (author of Mustaʿīnī; died early 12th century) spelled it kharshuf, as reported in Reinhart Dozy year 1869. The Andalusian Arab Ibn al-Khatīb (died 1374) spelled it خُرشُف khurshuf, as reported in Los Arabismos del Castellano en la Baja Edad Media, by Felipe Maíllo Salgado year 1998. All the known medieval Arabic records of kharshuf | khurshuf are in authors who were located in the Far Western part of the Arabic-speaking world. The rest of the Arabic-speaking world used other words, but one of the other words was harshaf, which was obviously the parent of the Far Western kharshuf, as noted by Reinhart Dozy year 1869 and Marcel Devic year 1876.
39. ^ Jump up to:^a b c Early records in Spanish of alcachofa | carchofa = "artichoke" are cited in Los Arabismos, by Maíllo Salgado, year 1998. A somewhat later instance in Spanish is alcarchofa in year 1513 in the book De Agricultura by Gabriel Alonso de Herrera – ref. Instances in 16th century Italian are cited in artichaut @ CNRTL.frand artichoke @ NED. The NED cites Italian variant word-forms from John Florio's year 1611 Italian-English Dictionary. The NED also has the early records in English. The ancient Greeks and Romans commonly ate artichokes, as documented in "Plants and Progress", by Michael Decker, year 2009, on pages 201-203. It is thought, but more evidence is desirable, that an improved artichoke cultivar arrived late in the medieval era and was the impetus for the spread of the new name in Europe in the 15th and early 16th centuries.
40. Jump up^ "Genesis of the word Assassin" is §610 of the book History of the Ismailis, by Mumtaz Ali Tajddin (1998). Additional information at: assassin @ NED ; assassin @ CNRTL.fr ; assassin- @ TLIO (in Italian) ; and Note #33: "Assassin" @ English Words Of Arabic Etymological Ancestry.
41. Jump up^ The word attar is not used in European languages other than English. An early record in English, 1792: "Roses are a great article for the famous otter, all of which is commonly supposed to come from Bengal" in northeast India – ref: NED. The earliest known use of the wordform "attar" according to the NED is in 1798 in The view of Hindoostan: Volume 2: Eastern Hindoostan, by Thomas Pennant, which says the roses for the attar are grown near Lucknow city in the Hindi/Urdu-speaking area of northest India and the attar is extracted by distillation. In Urdu, عطر ʿatr | ʿitr = "perfume", and also عطار ʿatār = "perfume"; see e.g. عطر @ Platts' Urdu-English Dictionary, year 1884. The spelling in Hindi is इत्र ittr | itr | itra = "perfume" – see e.g. Caturvedi's Hindi-English dictionary, year 1970. In the English of India in the 19th century it was called "Otto of Roses, or by imperfect purists Attar of Roses, an essential oil obtained in India from the petals of the flower, a manufacture of which the chief seat is at Ghazipur", a city in the Hindi/Urdu-speaking area of northeast India – Yule & Burnell, year 1903. The writer Fanny Parkes resided in India from 1822 to 1838 and was based at Allahabad city in the Hindi/Urdu-speaking area of northeast India from 1827 to 1838. She wrote about India: "The Muhammadans, both male and female, are extremely fond of perfumes of every sort and description ; and the quantity of atr of roses, atr of jasmine, atr of khas-khās, &c., that the ladies in a zenāna put upon their garments is quite over powering." – Ref.
42. Jump up^ A book on agriculture by Ibn Al-Awwam in 12th century Andalusia described how to grow the aubergine. Among copies of Ibn Al-Awwam's book there is the very unusual spelling البارنجان al-bārinjān but also the common spelling البادنجان al-bādinjān = "aubergine" – Banqueri year 1802, Clément-Mullet year 1866. The most common spelling among medieval writers was الباذنجان al-bādhinjān (which is also today's spelling). The Arabic dictionary Lisan Al-Arab dated 1290 said the word came from Persian – الباذنجان @ Baheth.info.
43. Jump up^ albergínia @ Diccionari.cat.
44. Jump up^ The phonetic shift from al- to au- is common in French; other French words showing this shift that have been borrowed into English include auburn, faux, mauveand sauce. Remarks on the etymology of the French aubergine are in Devic year 1876 and Lammens year 1890.
45. Jump up^ Medieval Arabic had عور ʿawr with the essential meaning of "blind in one eye" and عوار ʿawār = "any defect, or anything defective". Medieval Arabic dictionaries are atBaheth.info. Some translation to English of what's in the medieval Arabic dictionaries is in Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon, page 2193. The medieval Arabic dictionaries do not list the form عوارية ʿawārīa but it is naturally formed from ʿawār to mean "things that have ʿawār". According to Ernest Klein's English dictionary (1966),ʿawārīa is on record in medieval Arabic meaning "merchandise damaged by seawater". In medieval Arabic, the form ʿawārīa is a rarity while the forms عواري ʿawārī and عوارة ʿawāra are common when referring to things that have ʿawār – this can be seen in the searchable medieval Arabic texts at AlWaraq.net (book links are clickable on righthand side).
46. Jump up^ The Arabic origin of "average" was first reported by Reinhart Dozy in the 19th century. Dozy's original summary is in his 1869 book Glossaire des mots espagnols et portugais dérivés de l'arabe. Later, improved information about the word's early records in Italian, Catalan, and French is online at Avarie @ CNRTL.fr. Examples of the word's use in English over the centuries are in the NED (year 1888). Today's Italian avaria and French avarie still have the primary meaning of "damage". The meaning of "average" for Italian avaria and French avarie are 19th century borrowings from the English word. Some complexities surrounding the English word's history are discussed in Hensleigh Wedgwood year 1882 page 11 and Walter Skeat year 1888 page 781.
47. Jump up^ In medieval Arabic astronomy the usual word for an azimuth or direction was al-samt and the plural form of this was al-sumūt. Brill's Encyclopaedia of Islam has an encyclopedia entry about the use of the word "al-Samt" in Islamic astronomy – ref. The plural form was the source for the late medieval Latin azimuth. Normally, the medieval Arabic texts on astronomy use the word in the singular. A number of these texts were translated to Latin in the 12th and 13th centuries, and the translations do not use the word azimuth in Latin. In the Latin languages the word begins in the late 13th century. The Latins adopted it via use of Arabic astrolabes. The medieval Arabic astrolabes (1) had enhancements over the astrolabes of the ancient Greeks, and (2) were specifically set up to deal with a large number of defined azimuths, and (3) were adopted and copied by the late medieval Latins – see e.g. "Islamic Astronomical Instruments and Some Examples of Transmission to Europe", by David A. King, and other articles by David A. King on the subject of astrolabes. Astrolabes in Latin Europe prior to the late 13th century are rare, whereas they are not at all rare in the 14th century – as cataloged by David A. King in Appendix B and Appendix A at ref.
48. Jump up^ "Azimutz" in the MED. Likewise in NED.
49. Jump up^ Middle English Dictionary, entries for azure and lazurium.
50. Jump up^ Jāwī refers to Java in modern Arabic, but it referred to Sumatra in the medieval travel writer Ibn Batuta (died 1368 or 1369), who said that the best lubān jāwī came from Sumatra – Dozy, year 1869. The explanation for how the Arabic "lubān jāwī" got corrupted to the English "benzoin" is as follows, copied mostly from Benjoin @ CNRTL.fr. The word is seen in Catalan in 1430 spelled benjuí and in Catalan the definite article was lo. It is seen in French in 1479 spelled benjuyn and in French the definite article was le. In French the letter J is pronounced not far from the neighborhood of zh (as in "soup du zhour") and that is similar to the Arabic letter J (ج). But in Latin and Old Italian, the letter J is pronounced as a Y (as in "Yuventus"), and therefore writing Z instead of J would be somewhat more phonetic in Latin and Italian, and the word is seen in Italian in 1461 spelled benzoi (Italian i is pronounced like English ee) – Yule & Burnell 1903. Similarly in Italian in 1510 a traveller in the Arabian peninsula wrote "Zida" for Jeddah and wrote "Azami" for Ajami – Travels of Ludovico di Varthema (page 7 footnote 3).
51. Jump up^ "Bezoar" in Yule & Burnell (year 1903). "Bezoard" in Devic (year 1876)(in French). See also "A Treatise on the Bezoar Stone", by Mahmud bin Masud Imad al-Din (translation published in Annals of Medical History year 1935). "Bezoars" by R. Van Tassel, dated early 20th century, has a survey of the chemical and mineralogical composition of the historical bezoars.
52. ^ Jump up to:^a b c Medieval Arabic būraq encompassed various salts and often came with a qualifier attached to give more specificity. The salts included naturally-occurring sodium carbonate, potassium nitrate, and sodium borate (Lane's Lexicon page 191 and Pierre Guigues, year 1905). Medieval Arabic tinkār meant specifically borax, and it originated from a Sanskritic word tinkana meaning borax from Tibet and Cashmere – H. Grieb, year 2004. Tinkār was used as a fluxing agent in soldering metals. Al-Razi (died c. 930) said that tinkār is one type of būraq and another type is "goldsmith's būraq" (meaning a type of salt in customary use by goldsmiths for soldering) – H. Grieb, year 2004. Ibn Sina (died 1037) said būraq meant salts "hot and dry in the second degree" having uses as cleaning agents and other uses – ref. Abu al-Saltaka Albuzale (died 1134) used the word būraq for a compound consisting mainly of sodium carbonate, while using the word tinkār for borax – ref. In late medieval Latin alchemy books it was spelled baurac, baurach, boracia, borax, and other similar (e.g.), (e.g.). For some late medieval Latin writers the word had the same broad meaning as in Arabic. More often in late medieval Latin it meant a substance used as a fluxing agent – MED, Alphita, H. Grieb year 2004. In the post-medieval centuries in the European metallurgy literature, non-borax substances could be called "borax" when they were used as fluxing agents. As late as 1785, inSamuel Johnson's English Dictionary, borax was defined as "an artificial salt prepared from sal-ammonic, nitre, calcined tartar, sea salt and alum, dissolved in wine. It is principally used to solder metals." With regard to the salt called borax today, in 16th-century Europe the most common name for it was "tincar" | "atincar" and was also called "Arabian borax" and "borax". It was imported through Ottoman lands at that time, trade volume was small, and its main use was as a fluxing agent in gold and silver metalworking. The definitions of that era for tinckar, borax, boras, and baurac are given by Martin Ruland's year 1612 Lexicon Alchemiae (in Latin).
53. Jump up^ The first records of almanac in the West come from Roger Bacon (died 1294), who lived in northern Europe (Paris) and had no knowledge of Arabic. Roger Bacon spelled it both almanac and almanach, both of which are foreign-looking in Latin. They definitely look Arabic in Latin. But no antecedent word is on record in Arabic. Thus the origin of the Latin is a puzzle. Some worthwhile information and some speculations about it are given at "Almanac" in New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (year 1888). The etymology section of the Wikipedia almanac article has more information.
54. Jump up^ Those reporting the 13th-century Latin amalgama to be either surely or probably from Arabic al-malgham include Partridge (1966), Raja Tazi (1998), Random House Dictionary (2001), and Etymonline.com (2010). Loss of the first 'L' in going from al-malgham to amalgama (if it occurred) is called dissimilation in linguistics. 20th century Arabic has malgham = "amalgam" as a borrowing from Europe. Malgham was in earlier use in Arabic meaning a poultice or medicinal bandage dressing. E.g. Richardson's Arabic–English Dictionary, 1810 and 1852 editions, translates malgham as a poultice and does not translate it as an amalgam – ref: Year 1810 andYear 1852. In antiquity and medievally and continuing almost until the invention of modern antibiotics, amalgams containing mercury were often used in poultices to treat wound infections, because they were effective (example in 19th century English) (although they had known poisonous side-effects). An early medieval Syriac alchemy text has malagma meaning "amalgam" – ref: Supplement to Thesaurus Syriacus page 194. The usual meaning for malagma in medieval Syriac was "poultice" (e.g.). More convincingly, it is stated in the Arabic dictionary of Ibn Sida (died 1066): "any melting substance such as gold, etc. mixed with mercury is called مُلْغَمٌ molgham" – لغم @ Ibn Sīda's dictionary. Ibn Sida's statement was copied into the dictionary of Ibn Manzur (died 1312) – لغم @ Lisan al-Arab. However, it is hard to find further instances of the word in medieval Arabic in the broad vicinity of that meaning. A late 13th century Latin-to-Arabic dictionary translates Latin "com[m]iscere" (English "to mix") as Arabic لَغْمَنَه laghmana – Vocabulista in Arabico – means "mix two things" as it appends a dual to the verb. The Book of Stonesof Al-Biruni (died 1048) has كالملغمة kal-malghama meaning a paste consisting of cowdung and salt – ref. More instances plus more historical details about the medieval Arabic records of this word are at: English Words of Arabic Etymological Ancestry: Note #24 "Amalgam".
55. Jump up^ Constantinus Africanus writing in Latin in the 11th century mentions two Arabic names for borage (including the usual name for borage in medieval Arabic, lisān al-thūr) and he does not indicate that his own name borrago | borragine is an Arabic name. Ref: ISBN 9004100148 page 176 footnote 28. Nevertheless an Arabic source-word for borrago is the preferred proposition in a majority of today's dictionaries including Merriam-Webster, American Heritage, Concise OED, Collins English, CNRTL.fr, and Helmut Genaust. The Concise OED says: "medieval Latin borrago is perhaps from Arabic abū ḥurāš 'father of roughness' (referring to the leaves)." The other dictionaries just named say it is probably or perhaps from abū ʿaraq = "father of sweat" (referring to the herbal medicine use). There is a non-Arabic proposition deriving borrago from Latin burra | borra = "coarse wool, stuffing", horse-hair or wool used as stuffing, also "shaggy garment", "garment made of coarse material". This derivation is in observance of borage's hairy stems and rough-textured leaves, together with the Latin suffix -ago appended. Burra is attested since the 5th century in Latin. The Latin was also spelled borra. The Latin is the source of the medieval Italian borra = "raw hair, particularly raw hair used as wadding" (today's Italian borra means "wadding") – borra @ TLIO.ovi.cnr.it , borra @ ETIMO.it. Medieval French borre (today's French bourre) is the same word – bourre @ CNRTL.fr. The suffix "-ago" in Latin means "a sort of" (examples: classical Latin virago where Latin vir = "courageous man"; classical Latin plumbago (mineral) where Latin plumbum = "lead (a metal)"; classical Latin plantago where Latin planta = "foot-sole"). It is in botanical names from Latin including Filago, Medicago, Plantago,Plumbago, Selago, Solidago, Tussilago, Ventilago, fabago, githago, lentago, liliago, populago, trixago. Dictionaries who favor the derivation of the medieval Latinborrago from the Latin borra + -ago include: The Names of Plants by David Gledhill (year 2008); Dictionary of Arabic and Allied Loanwords, by Federico Corriente (year 2008); Random House Dictionary (2001); "Borra" @ ETIMO.it (in Italian); "borraggine" in Friedrich Diez year 1864; "borage" in Walter Skeat year 1888. More about the historical context surrounding this word's beginnings in medieval Latin is at: English Words of Arabic Ancestry: Note #167 "Borage".

C[edit]

camphor

كافور kāfūr, camphor. The medieval Arabs imported camphor by sea from the East Indies for aromatic uses and medical uses. Medieval Arabic general-purpose dictionaries say kāfūr is "well-known".^[2] Among the Latins the records begin in the late 9th century (with spelling cafora) though records are scarce until the 12th century.^[3] [1]. Another imported East Indies wood product which had both aromatic and medical uses in late medieval Europe and had Arabic word ancestry is sandalwood, from Arabic صندل sandal.^[4] In Arabic these two words came from the Indies along with the goods.

candy

قندي qandī, sugared. Cane sugar developed in ancient India. Persian qand = "cane sugar" is believed to have probably come from Sanskritic.^[5] The plant is native to a tropical climate. The medieval Arabs grew the plant with artificial irrigation and exported some of the product to the Latins. The word candientered all the Western languages in the later medieval centuries.^[6] [2]

carat (gold purity), carat (mass) 

قيراط qīrāt, a small unit of weight, defined as one-twentyfourth (¹/₂₄) of the weight of a certain coin namely the medieval Arabic gold dinar, and alternatively defined by reference to a weight of (e.g.) 4 barley seeds. In medieval Arabic the word was also used with the meaing of ¹/₂₄^th of the money value of a gold dinar coin. In the Western languages the word was adopted as a measurement term for the proportion of gold in a gold alloy, especially in a gold coin, beginning in Italy in the mid-13th century, occurring soon after some city-states of Italy started new issues of pure gold coins.^[7] [3]

caraway (seed) 

كرويا karawiyā | كراويا karāwiyā, caraway. The word with that meaning is quite common in mid-medieval Arabic. Spelled "caraway" in English in the 1390s in a cookery book.^[8] [4]

carob 

خرّوب kharrūb, carob. Carob beans and carob pods were consumed in the Mediterranean area from ancient times, and had several names in classical Latin. But a name of roughly around carrubia is in Latin from only the 11th century onward.^[9] The late medieval Latin word is the parent of today's Italian carruba, French caroube, English carob. [5]

carrack 

This is an old type of large sailing ship. The word's early records in the West are in the 12th and 13th centuries in the maritime republic of Genoa spelledcarraca | caracca.^[10] The word then passed into medieval French and Spanish.^[11] While it is believed to have been taken from Arabic there are different contenders for which Arabic word, namely: (1) قراقير qarāqīr = "merchant ships" (plural of qurqūr, "merchant ship") and (2) حرّاقة harrāqa = "warship" [6]. Another old type of sailing ship with Arabic word-origin is the Xebec [7]. Another is the Felucca [8]. Another is the Dhow [9].

check, checkmate, chess, exchequer, cheque, chequered, unchecked, checkout, checkbox, checkbook ... 

The many uses of "check" in English are all descended from Persian shah = "king" and the use of this word in the game of chess to mean "check the king". Chess was introduced to Europe by Arabs, who pronounced the last h in الشاه shāh hard, giving rise to the 12th-century French form eschac (also Catalanescac), and then French eschec, which the English is derived from.^[10][12][13] [10]. The "mate" in checkmate is from the medieval Arabic chess term شاه ماتshāh māt = "king dies".^[14] This too arrived in English through French and the early records in French are mat circa 1155 and "eschec et mat" circa 1224.^[10][11]. The English word chess arrived from medieval French esches = "chess" which was the plural of eschec = "check".^[15] [12]

chemistry 

See alchemy.

cipher, decipher 

صفر sifr, zero, i.e. the zero digit in the Arabic number system. Latin cifra was the parent of English cipher (or cypher). The word came to Latin Europe withHindu-Arabic numerals in the later 12th century. The meaning was originally numeral zero as a positionholder, then any positional numeral, then numerically encoded message. The last meaning, and decipher, dates from the 1520s in English, 1490s in French, 1470s in Italian.^[10] But in English cipher also continued to be used as a word for nought or zero until the 19th century.^[16] [13]

civet (mammal), civet (perfume) 

زبد zabad, foam, spume; qatt al-zabād, "spume cat", referring to a musky perfume excreted from a gland in the African civet. Al-Masudi (died 956) said the perfume, زباد zabād, was taken from a cat-like animal in India.^[17] That can be true as well because some species of civet are native in the Indies. The word is in 15th-century Italian as zibetto = "civet perfume".^[10] Records of the form civet start in Catalan 1372 and French 1401.^[10] [14]. Incidentally the botanical genus Abelmoschus got its name from Arabic حبّ المسك habb el-misk = "musk seed", a seed yielding a musky perfume.^[18] [15]

coffee, café 

قهوة qahwa, coffee. Coffee drinking originated in Yemen in the 15th century.^[19] Qahwa (itself of uncertain origin) begot Turkish kahveh. Turkish phonologydoes not have a /w/ sound, and the change from w to v in going from Arabic qahwa to Turkish kahveh can be seen in many other loanwords going from Arabic into Turkish (e.g. Arabic fatwa -> Turkish fetva). The Turkish kahveh begot Italian caffè. The latter word-form entered most Western languages in the early 17th century. The Western languages of the early 17th century also have numerous records where the word-form was taken directly from the Arabic, e.g. "Cahoa" in 1610, "Cahue" in 1615, "Cowha" in 1619.^[19] [16]. Cafe mocha, a type of coffee, is named after the port city of Mocha, Yemen, which was an early coffee exporter. [17]

cotton 

قطن qutn | qutun, cotton. This was the usual word for cotton in medieval Arabic.^[2] The word entered the Romance languages in the mid-12th century^[10] and English a century later. Cotton fabric was known to the ancient Romans as an import but it was rare in the Romance-speaking lands until imports from the Arabic-speaking lands in the later medieval era at transformatively lower prices.^[20] [18]

crimson, carmine 

قرمزي qirmizī, color of a certain class of red dyes used in the medieval era for dyeing silk and wool. The dyes were made from the bodies of certain scale insect species. In Latin in the early medieval centuries this kind of red dye was variously called coccinus, vermiculus, and grana. The Arabic name qirmizī | qirmiz enters the records in the West in the 13th century and soon became the most popular name. The letter 'n' in the English crimson and carmine descends from the Latin forms cremesinus | carmesinus where -inus is a Latin suffix.^[21] Crossref kermes, one of the scale-insect species. [19] [20]

curcuma (plant genus), curcumin (yellow dye), curcuminoid (chemicals) 

كركم kurkum, meaning ground turmeric root, also saffron. Turmeric dye gives a saffron yellow colour. Medieval Arabic dictionaries say kurkum is used as a yellow dye and used as a medicine.^[2] Ibn al-Baitar (died 1248) said kurkum is (among other things) a root from the East Indies that produces a saffron-like dye. In the West the early records have meaning turmeric and they are in late medieval Latin medical books that were influenced by Arabic medicine.^[22] [21]

D[edit]

damask (textile fabric), damask rose (flower) 

دمشق dimashq, city of Damascus. The city name Damascus is very ancient and not Arabic. The damson plum – earlier called also the damask plum and damascene plum – has a word-history in Latin that goes back to the days when Damascus was part of the Roman empire and so it is not from Arabic. On the other hand, the damask fabric and the damask rose emerged in the Western languages when Damascus was an Arabic-speaking city; and apparently they referred to goods originally sold from or made in Arabic Damascus.^[23] [22]

E[edit]

elixir 

الإكسير al-'iksīr, alchemical philosopher's stone, i.e. a pulverized mineral agent by which you could supposedly make gold or silver out of copper or other metals. The Arabs took the word from the Greek xēron, then prepended Arabic al- = "the". The Greek had entered Arabic meaning a dry powder for treating wounds, and it has a few records in medieval Arabic in that sense.^[14] Al-Biruni (died 1048) is an example of a medieval Arabic writer who used the word in the alchemy sense, for making gold.^[24] The Arabic alchemy sense entered Latin in the 12th century.^[10] Elixir is in all European languages today. [23]

erg (landform), hamada (landform), sabkha (landform), wadi (landform) 

عرق ʿerq, sandy desert landscape. حمادة hamāda, craggy desert landscape with very little sand. Those two words are in use in English in geomorphology andsedimentology. Their entrypoint was in late-19th-century studies of the Sahara Desert.^[25] [24]
سبخة sabkha, salt marsh. This Arabic word occurs occasionally in English and French in the 19th century. Sabkha with a technical meaning as coastal salt-flat terrain came into general use in sedimentology in the 20th century through numerous studies of the coastal salt flats on the eastern side of the Arabian peninsula.^[26] [25]
وادي wādī, a river valley or gully. In English, a wadi is a non-small gully that is dry, or dry for most of the year, in the desert. [26]

F[edit]

fennec (desert fox) 

فنك fenek, fennec fox. European naturalists borrowed it in the late 18th century. (In older Arabic writings, fenek also designated various other mammals^[27]).[27]

Addendum for words that may or may not be of Arabic ancestry[edit]

carafe 

First appearance in the West around 1500 in Italian as caraffa meaning a glass carafe, 1570 Spanish garrafa.^[10] But 14th and 15th century Sicilian Italiancarraba, with the same meaning, appears to be the same word.^[28] An Arabic hypothesis is that the verb غرف gharf means to scoop up water for a drink, which you can do by cupping your hands together or by using any scooping or lifting tool at all, and the name of the tool can be the noun غرافة gharāfa.Gharāfa is a good fit phonologically, and can carry the semantics of an intermediate container for a drink, but the word is almost completely absent from Arabic writings and almost completely lacking in other support from history.^[29] [28]

caliber, calipers 

Excluding an isolated and semantically unclear record in northern France in 1478, the early records are in French in the 16th century spelled calibre, equally often spelled qualibre, with two concurrent meanings: (1) "the interior diameter of a gun-barrel" and (2) "the quality or comparative character of anything". The source-word for the French is uncertain. A popular idea is that it came from Arabic قالب qālib = "mold" but evidence to support this idea is very scant.^[30][29]

cork 

The earliest records in England are 1303 "cork" and 1342 "cork" meaning bulk cork bark imported from Iberia.^[31] It is widely reported today that the word came from Spanish alcorques = "slipper shoes made of cork". This Spanish "al-" word cannot be found in writing in any medieval Arabic author. Most etymology dictionaries nevertheless state that the Spanish word is almost surely from Arabic because of the "al-". However, there is evidence in Spanish supporting the contrary argument that the "al-" in this case was probably solely Spanish and that the corque part of the Spanish word descended from classical Latin without Arabic intermediation (and to repeat, the evidence in Arabic is that there was no such word in Arabic). The ancient Romans used cork and called it, among other names, cortex (literally: "bark"). From that Latin, medieval and modern Spanish has es:Corcho = "cork material". Corcho is definitely not from Arabic. Corcho is the more likely source for the English word.^[32] [30]

drub 

Probably from ضرب ḍarb, to strike or hit with a cudgel. The word is not in other European languages. The English word drub "appears first after 1600; all the early instances, before 1663, are from travellers in the Orient, and refer to the bastinado. Hence, in the absence of any other tenable suggestion, it may be conjectured to represent Arabic ضرب daraba (also pronounced duruba), to beat, to bastinado, and the verbal noun darb (also pronounced durb)."^[33] [31]

fanfare, fanfaronade 

English fanfare is from French fanfare, which is probably from Spanish fanfarria and fanfarrón and fanfarronear, meaning bluster, grandstanding, and a talker who is full of bravado. Spanish records also have the lesser-used variant forms farfantón | farfante with pretty much the same meaning as fanfarrón. The origin of the Spanish words is obscure and uncertain. An origin in the Arabic of medieval Spain is possible. One Arabic candidate is فرفر farfar | فرفارfarfār | فرفرة farfara which is in the medieval Arabic dictionaries with meanings including "lightness and frivolity", "talkative", and "shouting".^[34] [32]

Footnotes[edit]

1. Jump up^ The dictionaries used to compile the list are these: Centre National de Ressources Textuelles et Lexicales: Etymologies, Online Etymology Dictionary, Random House Dictionary, Concise Oxford English Dictionary, American Heritage Dictionary, Collins English Dictionary, Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Arabismen im Deutschen: lexikalische Transferenzen vom Arabischen ins Deutsche, by Raja Tazi (year 1998), A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (a.k.a. "NED") (published in pieces between 1888 and 1928), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English (year 1921) by Ernest Weekley. Footnotes for individual words have supplementary other references. The most frequently cited of the supplementary references is Glossaire des mots espagnols et portugais dérivés de l'arabe (year 1869) by Reinhart Dozy.
2. ^ Jump up to:^a b c A number of large dictionaries were written in Arabic during medieval times. Searchable copies of nearly all of the main medieval Arabic dictionaries are online atBaheth.info and/or AlWaraq.net. One of the most esteemed of the dictionaries is Ismail ibn Hammad al-Jawhari's "Al-Sihah" which is dated around and shortly after year 1000. The biggest is Ibn Manzur's "Lisan Al-Arab" which is dated 1290 but most of its contents were taken from a variety of earlier sources, including 9th- and 10th-century sources. Often Ibn Manzur names his source then quotes from it. Therefore, if the reader recognizes the name of Ibn Manzur's source, a date considerably earlier than 1290 can often be assigned to what is said. A list giving the year of death of a number of individuals who Ibn Manzur quotes from is in Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon, volume 1, page xxx (year 1863). Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon contains much of the main contents of the medieval Arabic dictionaries in English translation. At AlWaraq.net, in addition to searchable copies of medieval Arabic dictionaries, there are searchable copies of a large number of medieval Arabic texts on various subjects.
3. Jump up^ Book An Historical Geography of Camphor by R.A. Donkin, year 1999, 300 pages, includes chapters on the use of camphor by the medieval Arabs and the medieval Latins. See also etymology of French camphre @ CNRTL.fr. The word is in Greek as kaphoura circa 1075 in Simeon Seth, a writer influenced by Arabic medicine. A couple of records exist in Greek that may date from centuries earlier than Simeon Seth though the dating is afflicted with uncertainties. Camphor has no records among the ancient Greeks and Romans.
4. Jump up^ English "sandalwood" descends from medieval Latin sandalus | sandalum, which is ultimately from Sanskrit čandana = "sandalwood". The sandalwood aromatic wood came from the Indies. In medieval Arabic it was called sandal and was commonly used and well-known (examples). The word is in Greek in Late Antiquity assantalon. Some etymology dictionaries derive the medieval Latin from the Greek with disregard for the Arabic. Others derive the medieval Latin from the Arabic with disregard for the Greek on the grounds that (1) Arabic (especially Yemeni) seafarers were the main providers of sandalwood to medieval Europe; and (2) the 'd' in the Arabic can explain how the Latin has a 'd'; and (3) the Latin emerges too late for a Greek source to be likely: CNRTL.fr cites the 11th-century medical writerConstantinus Africanus for the earliest record of sandalus | sandalum in Latin. The book The Moluccas and the Traffic in Spices up to the Arrival of Europeans, by Robin A. Donkin, year 2003, has some early history for sandalwood in Europe on pages 110, 114, 116, and 122; and some more ancient and medieval history for sandalwood is in the book An Historical Geography of Camphor, by Robin A. Donkin, year 1999. According to these two books, the word's first document in Greek in the 1st century AD in Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, spelled santalinon, and it is present but rare in Greek sources in the early centuries AD, and there is one record in Late Classical Latin as santalium (clearly borrowed from the Greek), but when Constantinus Africanus used it as sandalus | sandalum in the late 11th century the word had been absent in Latin for over six centuries, or more exactly the books' author does not know of a surviving record from all those intervening centuries. Many records are in later medieval Latin. The medieval Arabs used sandalwood in medicine (e.g.) and that was copied by the late medieval Latins (e.g.). As a reflection of the widespread later-medieval use of sandalwood the word is in late medieval English, German, French, Italian and Iberian Romance languages (all invariably spelling it with a 'd'). Dictionaries deriving the Latin & Western name from the Arabic name include ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, and others, while the dictionary at ref sits on the fence on the question. The scientific or New Latin name for the sandalwood tree genus is Santalum, a wordform that arose as a Renaissance-era re-fashioning from the Greek, says CNRTL.
5. Jump up^ An ancient Sanskrit text called Arthashastra has word khanda meaning cane sugar made in a certain way – The Sugar Cane Industry: An Historical Geography from its Origins to 1914, by J.H. Galloway, year 1989, page 20. Khanda in Sanskritic has a broad meaning of "broken" and is used as a qualifier on granulated and candied sugars in India still – Yule & Burnell, year 1903. It has the potential to have been the parent of the Persian qand = "sugar". In subtle contrast, medieval Arabic qand = "the juice or honey of sugar cane" (www.Baheth.info). The Arabic qand was probably from the Persian qand, as per the historical diffusion evidence in Galloway's bookpage 24.
6. Jump up^ The medieval Arabic dictionaries including the al-Sihāh dictionary dated about 1003 have قند qand defined firstly as the juice or honey of sugar cane. Arabic qandī = "from qand" or "of qand". Candy's earliest known dates in the Western languages: French candi = 1256; Anglo-Latin candy = 1274; Italian candi = 1310; Spanish cande= 1325–1326; Netherlands Dutch candijt and candi = 2nd half of 14th century; German kandith = probably circa 1400, German zuckerkandyt = 1470; English candy = circa 1420. An English-to-Latin dictionary dated circa 1440 has English sukyr candy translated as Latin sucura de candia. The word is rare in English until the later 16th century. Refs: Baheth.info, CNRTL.fr, UMich MED, Raja Tazi, NED, TLIO, Egymologiebank.nl, Promptorium parvulorum. See also history of sugar.
7. Jump up^ For the meaning of qīrāt in medieval Arabic see ḳīrāṭ @ Brill's Encyclopaedia of Islam, First Edition, Volume 4 page 1024 and قيراط @ Baheth.info. In the early records of the word carat in medieval French and English, it referred to the purity of gold, most often of gold coins, and is seen additionally as a unit of weight only later on – ref: DMF, ref: MED. The French and English came from Italian. The first known records in the West are in Italian-Latin in 1264 and Italian in 1278 – carat @ CNRTL.fr. For five centuries before 1250, no State or kingdom in Western Christendom issued gold coins, except for a few short-lived, relatively minor issuances in Iberia and Sicily (for details on the exceptions see ref). (Silver was the metal of choice for money in the West in those centuries). Starting in 1252 in Republic of Genoa, 1252 in Republic of Florence, and 1284 in Republic of Venice, the Italian city-states started issuing 24-carat gold coins. These were well received, and many other States soon followed their example, including France in 1290 and England in 1344. During the five centuries prior to 1250, gold coins were almost continually minted by the Arabs and the Byzantine Greeks. During those centuries in both Arabic and Greek the word carat was in use in the sense of 1/24th of a gold coin; i.e., Arabic qīrāt was 1/24th of the Arabic dinar and Greek keration was 1/24th of the Greek bezant. It is quite possible that the Italians borrowed the word from both Arabic and Greek concurrently. Greater details on the word's history are at English Words That Are Of Arabic Etymological Ancestry: Note #49.
8. Jump up^ Al-karawiyā = "caraway" is in medieval general-purpose dictionaries in Arabic (www.Baheth.info), and it is mentioned multiple times by the author of the 10th centuryNabataean Agriculture (ref), and dozens of times in the cookery book of Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq (flourished 10th century) (ref), and it occurs in the medical books ofAl-Razi (died c. 930) (ref) and Ibn Sina (died 1037) (ref), and in the geography book of Ibn Hawqal (died 988) (ref), and in the agriculture book of Ibn al-'Awwam(died not long after 1200) (ref), and other medieval Arabic writers (ref). Ibn al-'Awwam in Andalusia in the late 12th century described how to grow a crop of caraway seeds and also crops of nigella seeds, cumin seeds, cardamom seeds, anise seeds and other aromatic seeds. An Arabic cookery book from 13th century Andalusia has dozens of recipes that use caraway seeds as a spice (ref, ref). From the Andalusian Arabic, Old Spanish and Catalan had alcarahueya | alcarauia = "caraway" (year 1250 per Corominas). Modern Spanish is alcaravea. Medieval Sicilian Italian had caruya | caruye = "caraway" with date before 1312 (ref: Caracausi) and its word-form shows it is undoubtedly from the Arabic. Medieval Latin carui | carvi = "caraway" appears to have come in part from the same Arabic, but there is a question and lack of clarity about this because classical Greek karo | karon | karos, classical Latin careum and medieval Latin caruum | carea designated various aromatic seeds, among different writers, and in most cases it is not clear what species the writer was referring to. In the classical records the name is uncommon and the species it names is never clear. For example Dioscorides in Greek in the 1st century AD said "Karo[s] is a... little seed.... It has much the same nature as anise. The boiled root is edible as a vegetable." – ref, ref. Many aromatic seeds (including caraway) can be fitted to that statement within the botanical family Apiaceae. The book A History of the Principal Drugs of Vegetable Origin (year 1879) reports about caraway: "It is not noticed by St. Isidore, archbishop of Seville in the 7th century, though he mentions fennel, dill, coriander, anise, and parsley [all in the Apiaceae family]; nor is it named by St. Hildegard in Germany in the 12th century. Neither have we found any reference to it in the Anglo-Saxon Herbarium of Apuleius, written circa A.D. 1050, or in other works of the same period, though cumin, anise, fennel, and dill are all mentioned. On the other hand, in two German medicine-books of the 12th and 13th centuries... and in a Welsh medicine book of the 13th century... the seeds appear to have been in use [medicinally]. Caraway was certainly in use in England at the close of the 14th century [culinarily]." – ref. Carui occurs more than a dozen times in the influential Latin medical writer Constantinus Africanus (died c. 1087) who took the bulk of his content from Arabic medical sources – ref. The records for caraway in Christian Western Europe grow rapidly from the 12th century onward while being absent in Latin in the medieval centuries before Constantinus. This can be taken as a sign that the word arrived from the Arabic. As another sign, late medieval English has it as caraway, also carwy, and the first record in English iscarewy (1282), and these English wordforms do not exhibit Latin parentage: The letter 'w' was created to represent a sound that does not occur in Latin (and Latin texts do not use the letter 'w' except to represent some Germanic names); and the words of the English language with the letter 'w' are almost never of Latin descent, particularly not the words with start dates in English in and around the 13th century. The Middle English Dictionary has a set of examples of caraway in late medieval English.
9. Jump up^ Regarding "carob", medieval Arabic had two spellings, kharrūb and kharnūb. Both spellings are listed by medieval Arabic dictionaries – www.Baheth.info. A medical encyclopedia in Latin by Matthaeus Silvaticus dated 1317 listed the Latin spellings karnub, carnub, karubia, carrubia, currubia – ref. A very early Latin record, from the 11th century, has it spelled karabe – CNRTL.fr. The Arabic kharrūb has predecessors in ancient Assyrian and early medieval Syriac as ḫarūbu | ḥarūb = "carob" – ḫarūbu @ Assyrian (Akkadian) Dictionary and ḥrwb @ Aramaic (Syriac) Dictionary.
10. ^ Jump up to:^{a b c d e f g h i} More details at CNRTL.fr Etymologie in French language. Centre National de Ressources Textuelles et Lexicales (CNRTL) is a division of the French National Centre for Scientific Research.
11. Jump up^ That the carrack sailing ship name (Spanish carraca) originated in Italy is noted by Diccionario RAE and CNRTL.fr.
12. Jump up^ Reported in "An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language" by Walter W. Skeat (year 1888). Downloadable at Archive.org.
13. Jump up^ When borrowing a word from Persian whose final letter was ـه h, medieval Arabic tended to change the final letter to q or j. Some medieval examples are in Lammens, year 1890 page 103. This is evidence that Persian terminal ـه h was pronounced "hard" in Arabic.
14. ^ Jump up to:^a b Glossaire des mots espagnols et portugais dérivés de l'arabe by R. Dozy & W.H. Engelmann. 430 pages. Published in 1869.
15. Jump up^ Dictionnaire du Moyen Français has a collection of examples of late medieval French esches and eschec.
16. Jump up^ Nathan Bailey's English Dictionary in year 1726 defined zero as "a word used for cypher or nought especially by the French" – ref. Samuel Johnson's English Dictionary in 1755 and 1785 did not include the word zero at all. The usual names for zero in English from the late medieval period until well into the 19th century were "nought" and "cifre" | "cipher" – ref1a, ref1b, ref2a, ref2b. Meanwhile, the use of "cipher" & "decipher" to mean "encrypt" & "decrypt" started in English in the 16th century, borrowed from French – ref.
17. Jump up^ "Civette" in Remarques sur les mots français dérivés de l'arabe, by Henri Lammens, year 1890. Al-Masudi's 10th century Arabic together with modern French translation is in chapter 33 of Al-Masudi's Prairies d'Or.
18. Jump up^ The "musk seed" or "abelmosk" plant is native to tropical Asia and requires a long growing season (ref). It was in irrigated cultivation in Egypt in the late 16th and early 17th centuries and that was when European taxonomists got specimens of it from Egypt and adopted the name from Egypt – Etymologisches Wörterbuch der botanischen Pflanzennamen, by Helmut Genaust, year 1996. The Latin botanist Prospero Alpini (died 1617) visited Egypt in the 1580s. He called the plant"Abelmosch", "Aegyptii Mosch", and "Bammia Muschata", where بامية bāmiya is Arabic for okra, aka Abelmoschus esculentus, mosch is Latin for musk, Aegypti is Latin for Egypt, and Abel is an Italian-Latin representation of Arabic habb el- = "seed" – De Plantis Exoticis, by Prospero Alpini (in Latin, published 1629); written"hab el mosch" in De Plantis Aegyptiis Observationes et Notae ad Prosperum Alpinum, by Johann Veslingius, in Latin, year 1638. Some other European taxonomists of the 17th and 18th centuries called it instead "Ketmia Aegyptiaca" (e.g.) (e.g.). A second tropical genus in the same botanical family whose name is a loanword from Egypt from the same point in time is Melochia, from Arabic ملوخية molūkhiya – ref Helmut Genaust 1996.
19. ^ Jump up to:^a b Book: All About Coffee, by William H. Ukers (year 1922), chapter 1 "Dealing with the Etymology of Coffee" and chapter 3 "Early History of Coffee Drinking". According to this book, coffee-drinking as we know it has its earliest reliable record in mid-15th-century Yemen. It arrived in Cairo in the early 16th, and became widespread in the Ottoman Empire during the 16th. It arrived in Western Europe in the early 17th. The earliest European importers were Venetians who used the wordcaffè (1615), from Turkish kahveh. The predominance of Venetians in the seaborne trade between the Ottoman Empire and the West helped this word (and derivations from it) prevail in the West. Most dictionaries say English coffee (and Dutch koffie) is from the Venetian/Italian but some judge it to be independently from the Turkish.
20. Jump up^ Book The Italian Cotton Industry in the Later Middle Ages, by Maureen Fennell Mazzaoui (Cambridge University Press 1981), Chapter I: "Cotton cultivation in the ancient and medieval world" and Chapter II: "The Mediterranean cotton trade 1100–1600".
21. Jump up^ In the later medieval centuries in English, French, Italian, Spanish, and Latin, the kermes dye was called grain (or grana | granum). Kermes-type red dyes were also called in late medieval English "cremesyn" | "crimsin", French cramoisi and French cremesy, Italian chermisi | cremisi, Spanish carmesí. In Latin this was usually in the form cremesinus | carmesinus | carmesinum | carmisinus, where the Latin suffix -inus in vaguest sense means "pertaining to" and includes a meaning of "made from". The Latin is dated later medieval. The English and French word "carmine" does not appear until the 18th century in English and French, but it appears occasionally in late medieval Latin as carminum = "kermes-type red dye". The carminum word-form is basically a contraction of carmesinus = "kermes-type red dye", the form possibly influenced within Latin by the red mineral pigment name minium – carmine @ NED, CNRTL.fr, Alphita (page 93 footnote 6). More history atkermes.
22. Jump up^ Ibn al-Baitar said كركم kurkum is a root that is brought from the East Indies and produces a saffron-like yellow dye; he also said kurkum can alternatively mean the yellow root of the Mediterranean plant Chelidonium majus – ref, ref. An early record of the word in Latin is in a medical dictionary dated 1292, Synonyma Medicinaeby Simon of Genoa, where curcuma is said to be a yellow root that can be used to dye clothes and is said to come from a Chelidonium-type plant – ref. A mix-up in meaning between Curcuma root and Chelidonia root was present in the definition of the name "curcuma" in late medieval Latin. The mix-up was noted in the early-16th-century Latin pharmacy book Antidotarium by Pseudo-Mesué – ref. In English the early records are in medical books and two examples from at or before 1425 are in the Middle English Dictionary: Example 1, Example 2. In Example 2 a Latin text by Guy de Chauliac dated 1363 was translated to English before 1425. In it, the Latin word "curcuma" was written down in English as "curcuma" and described as "the root of citrines, perhaps of chelidonia", which is interpretable as the Curcuma longa root, i.e. turmeric, or at least it is some root of roughly turmeric color – see citrine.
23. Jump up^ In French, Italian and Spanish the word for damask is the same as the word for Damascus. In late medieval English the city name Damascus was often written Damask. Some history for the English words "damask", "damask rose", "damaskeen", etc., and "damson", is in A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles(year 1897).The late medieval European "damask" was a costly decorated fabric, which was usually but not necessarily of silk. The commencement of records for the damask fabric is in the 14th century in French, English, Catalan, Italian, and Latin – ref, ref, ref, ref (and ref cf.). The term "damask steel", "damascus steel" and "damascening (metals)" has a 16th-century introduction date and it is a metaphorical extension from the damask textile fabric, notwithstanding that Damascus had a reputation for steel-making with a prior history; "Damascus Steel in Legend and in Reality" (year 1965). With regard to the textile fabric, the city of Damascus in the later medieval centuries had a reputation for high-quality silk brocades (e.g.: quote from year 1154). In Europe, "traders fastened the name of damascen or damask upon every silken fabric richly wrought and curiously designed, no matter whether it came or not from Damascus" (quoting 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica). Starting out from a similar marketing motive, fine silk fabric was commonly called in late medieval English "sarcenet", a word that was derived from "Saracen" meaning a Muslim. Sarcenet got established as a term in late medieval Europe on the basis of the good reputation of silk fabrics imported from Muslim countries. A word for plain silk that is in most of the Arabic medieval dictionaries is dimaqs. The Arabic medieval dictionaries do not have dimashq (Damascus) for any kind of fabric. One of them does have dimashq for the damask rose. See دمقس and دمشق @ Baheth.info.
24. Jump up^ The 11th century Book of Precious Stones by Al-Biruni is online in Arabic with searchable text at Alwaraq.net: كتاب الجماهر في معرفة الجواهر. Also in Arabic at مكتبة-المصطفى.com. An English translation of the book is at Farlang.com, translated by Hakim Mohammad Said, year 1989, with elixir at page 85.
25. Jump up^ Etymology at: Erg and Hamada (in French). Definition of hamada in a geology dictionary at ref (in English).
26. Jump up^ An Intro to Sabkhas. Also A Proposed Formal Definition for Sabkha.
27. Jump up^ In medieval Arabic fenek | fanak could be any mammal species whose pelts were used to make fur coats for humans and most often these were species of theweasel family. CNRTL.fr, Devic, Dozy & Engelmann.
28. Jump up^ Arabismi Medievali di Sicilia by Girolamo Caracausi, year 1983 (in Italian). Documents the medieval Sicilian carraba = "glass carafe" on pages 160-161.
29. Jump up^ Gharrāf meaning a carafe or jug is on record in Arabic in the later 19th century – ref: Henri Lammens, year 1890. Henri Lammens cites both his own experience in the Levant and a report by es:José María Lerchundi in Morocco. But that Arabic word has to be suspected as borrowed from Europe because there is no known record in Arabic at a sufficiently early date. The meanings of the old rootword غرف gharaf and words derived from it are given in Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon Volume 6 and the abbreviations used by Lane's Lexicon are expanded and dated in Volume 1, pages xxx - xxxi. The origin of "carafe" is discussed in French in Dozy, year 1869and CNRTL.fr.
30. Jump up^ The idea that Western calibre = "gun-barrel size" comes etymologically from Arabic qālib = "mold" is an old idea which can be found in Gilles Ménage's Dictionnaire Etymologique year 1670. Most dictionaries still adhere to this idea today and the majority of them say the transmission to the West was through Italian. That has the weakness that the word is not attested in Italian until 1606 whereas it is in French as calibre or qualibre in 1523 (ref: page 73), 1546 (ref), 1547 (ref), 1548 (ref), 1550 (ref: page 77), 1552 as qualibrée meaning "calibrated" (ref), and a large and growing number of times later in the 16th century in French; and in English in 1567, 1588, 1591 and onward (ref); and in German starting in 1603 (ref). The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology by Robert K. Barnhart says "Italian calibro (1606) and Spanish calibre (1594) appear too late to act as intermediate forms between Middle French and Arabic qalib", but goes on to say Middle French calibre probably did come from the Arabic somehow. Likewise the Castilian Spanish Diccionario RAE and the Catalan Diccionari.cat say their word calibre is from the French which in turn is, or perhaps is, from Arabic qālib. Evidence is very scant for transmission of Arabic qālib = "mold" to French calibre by any route. Hence the New English Dictionary on Historical Principles says the French word is "of uncertain origin". English Words Of Arabic Etymological Ancestry: Note #168: Caliber has many details about the early history of the French word, and argues that the word did not come from Arabic and instead probably came from Latin qua libra = "of what weight".
31. Jump up^ "Cork" in the Middle English Dictionary.
32. Jump up^ English "cork" has or probably has Arabic ancestry via Spanish alcorque according to Weekley (1921), Klein (1966), Partrige (1966), Ayto (2005), Etymonline (2010), Random House (2010), American Heritage (2009), Concise OED (2010), Collins English (2010), and Merriam-Webster (2010). Most of these also say the Arabic in turn would be connectable back to classical Latin quercus = "[cork] oak tree" or else to classical Latin cortex = "[cork] bark". Classical Latin larix is the source for the tree-name in English larch, German Lärche, Italian larice, Portuguese lariço, and Spanish alerce, and while the prepended 'a' on the Spanish alerce may perhaps reflect an Arabic influence it is not by itself enough to prove an Arabic source for Spanish alerce. Neither larch nor cork are attested as words in medieval Arabic writings and the larch tree does not grow natively in Arabic-speaking lands. (Compare entries for alcornoque, alcorque, corcho, and alerce in An Etymological Dictionary of the Romance Languages, Diez tr. Donkin (year 1864)). Despite the absence of a "cork" word in Arabic writings, an Arabic–Latin dictionary written in Spain by an anonymous native Spanish speaker during the late 13th century (estimated date) contains an Arabic قرق qorq translated to Latin as "sotular" – Vocabulista in Arabico. The Latin "sotular" meant "shoe" (in general a leather-made shoe) – DuCange's Medieval Latin Glossary. In English in 1391 "corkes" meant shoes or sandals, presumably made of cork – Middle English Dictionary. The medieval Spanish alcorques meant shoe-slippers made of cork (and never meant "cork") – see e.g., e.g., e.g.. The Spanish almadreña = "wooden clog shoes" has no precedent in Arabic writings and instead appears to be purely Spanish madreña | madereña, from Spanishmadera = "wood", from a classical Latin word for wood, with "al-" prefixed in Spanish alone – Dozy and Engelmann page 372. The same can be the case withalcorque = "cork slipper shoes" in view of its complete absence in medieval Arabic writers. Since the English "cork" meant bulk cork bark from its earliest records (ref: MED), the parent of English "cork" can have been the medieval Spanish corcho = "cork bark" not alcorque = "cork slipper shoes". Looking at it phonetically there is not much to prefer between CORTCH-O and AL-COR-GAY as a parent for CORK. The classical Latin cortex = "bark of any tree" produced today's Spanish corteza = "bark of any tree" but also today's Portuguese cortiça = "bark of the cork tree exclusively". The classical Latin suber meaning exclusively "cork bark" produced today's Portuguese súber = "bark of any tree". Spanish pancho is from Latin pantex, Spanish mucho from Latin multus, Spanish ocho and dicho from Latin octo and dictus, Spanish percha from Latin pertica, all without Arabic intermediation, and corcho is adjudged to be similarly evolved from cortex by Dozy, Diez, Corominas, DRAE, and other Spanish experts. Diez also has the minority judgement that alcorque derives from the classical Latin cortex by a Spanish-only path on which the letter 't' was deleted. In Catalan the usual word for "bark of any tree" is escorça, which comes with deletion of 't' from the classical Latin cortex and/or classical Latin scortea = "tough outer skin, or leather". After 't' is deleted, comparable evolutions would include today's Spanish pliegue from classical Latin plex, Spanish pulga from classical Latin pulex, and Spanish bosque from early medieval Latin boscus, Catalan bosc, Italian bosco, French bois.
33. Jump up^ "Drub" in New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (year 1897).
34. Jump up^ For the medieval Arabic dictionaries' definitions of farfār | farfara, see فرفر | فرفار @ Baheth.info and Lane's Lexicon page 2357. The word is listed in the year 1852 Richardson's Arabic-English Dictionary with meanings of "talkative" and "flighty" (ref) though it is not in the Arabic dictionaries of today. This proposed Arabic source-word for the Spanish fanfarria and fanfarrón was reported by Gilles Ménage in his Dictionnaire Etymologique back in year 1670 – ref. Today it is contemplated but not fully endorsed at fanfarrón @ RAE.es , farfante @ RAE.es , fanfaron @ CNRTL.fr , fanfaronade @ American Heritage Dictionary and fanfare @ Etymonline.com.

G[edit]

garble 

غربل gharbal, to sift. Common in Arabic before year 1000.^[2] Starts in the West as Catalan garbellar = "to sift" (1261), Latin garbellare = "to sift dyestuffs" (1269 in seaport of Marseille), Italian gherbellare = "to sift drugs and spices" (1321),^[3] English garbele = "to sift spices" (1393), French grabeler = "to sift drugs and spices" (1439).^[3] In late medieval Europe, pepper and ginger and a number of other spices were always imports from the Arabic-speaking eastern Mediterranean (see medieval spice trade), and the same goes for many botanical drugs (herbal medicines) and a few expensive colorants. The spices, drugs and colorants contained variable amounts of natural chaff residuals and occasionally contained unnatural added chaff. In England among the merchants of these products in late medieval and early post-medieval centuries, garble was a frequent word.^[4] Sifting and culling was word's usual meaning in English until the 19th century and today's meaning grew out from it.^[5] The older meaning is arguably the parent of the English garbage.^[4] [1]

gauze 

قزّ qazz, plain silk – this is not certain as the source for the Western word, but etymology dictionaries are almost unanimous the source is very probably from medieval Arabic somehow. The English is from late medieval French gaze, pronounced gazz in French, meaning "high-quality lightweight fabric" (very often but not necessarily silk). Al-qazz = "silk" was frequent in medieval Arabic, and it could be relatively easily transferred into the Latin languages because most of the silk of the medieval Latins was imported from Arabic and Byzantine lands.^[6] Other propositions involving other Arabic source-words for the Frenchgaze have also been aired.^[6] "The word, like so many names of supposed Oriental fabrics, is of obscure origin and varying sense."^[7] [2]

gazelle 

غزال ghazāl, gazelle. Two species of gazelle are native in the Middle East. The word's earliest known record in the West is in 12th-century Latin as gazela in a book about the First Crusade by Albert of Aix.^[8] Another early record is in 13th-century French as gazel in a book about the Seventh Crusade by Jean de Joinville. [3]

gerbil, jerboa, gundi, jird 

These are four classes of rodents native to desert or semi-desert environments in North Africa and Asia, and not found natively in Europe. 19th-century European naturalists created "gerbil" as a Latinate diminutive of the word jerboa [4]. يربوع yarbūʿa = jerboa, 17th-century European borrowing [5]. قنديqundī = gundi, 18th-century European borrowing [6]. جرد jird = jird, 18th-century European borrowing^[9] [7].

ghoul 

غول ghūl, ghoul. Ghouls are a well-known part of Arabic folklore. The word's first appearance in the West was in an Arabic-to-French translation of the 1001 Arabian Nights tales in 1712.^[8] Its first appearance in English was in a popular novel, Vathek, an Arabian Tale by William Beckford, in 1786.^[10] Ghouls appear in English translations of the 1001 Arabian Nights tales in the 19th century. [8]

giraffe 

زرافة zarāfa, giraffe. The giraffe and its distinctiveness was discussed by medieval Arabic writers including Al-Jahiz (died 868) and Al-Masudi (died 956).^[11]The earliest records of the transfer of the Arabic word to the West are in Italian in the second half of the 13th century,^[8] a time at which a few giraffes were brought to the Kingdom of Sicily and Naples from a zoo in Cairo, Egypt.^[12] [9]

guitar 

قيتارة qītāra | كيثرة kaīthara, a lyre and more broadly a plucked string instrument. The name is ultimately descended from ancient Greek kithara, which was a plucked string musical instrument of the lyre type. Classical and medieval Latin had cithara as a lyre and more loosely a plucked string instrument. So did the medieval Romance languages. Cithara was pronounced "sitara". Cithara is unlikely to be the parent of the French quitarre (c. 1275), French guiterne (c. 1280), French kitaire (c. 1285), Italian chitarra (c. 1305; pronounced "kitarra"), and Spanish guitarra (1330–1343), each meaning a gittern type guitar.^[13]The reason it is unlikely: A change from ci- to any of qui- | gui- | ki- | chi- has no parallel change in form in other words within the Romance languages around that time. Hence the qui- | gui- | ki- | chi- form (which is essentially all one form) is believed to have been introduced from an external source. A minority of dictionaries report the external source was medieval Greek kithára = "lyre, and more loosely a plucked string instrument", a common word in medieval Greek records. A majority of dictionaries report the external source was Arabic qītāra | kaīthara with the same meaning as the Greek. An Arabic name of roughly the form qītāra | kaīthār is extremely rare in medieval Arabic records, which undermines the idea that Arabic was the source.^[14] Lute andtanbur on this list are descended from names that are common in medieval Arabic records for guitar-type musical instruments. [10]

H[edit]

haboob (type of sandstorm) 

هبوب habūb, gale wind. The English means a dense, short-lived, desert sandstorm created by an air downburst. Year 1897 first known use in English. [11]

harem 

حريم harīm, women's quarters in a large household. The Arabic root-word means "forbidden" and thus the word had a connotation of a place where men were forbidden. (Crossref Persian and Urdu Zenana for semantics.) 17th-century English entered English through Turkish, where the meaning was closer to what the English is. In Arabic today harīm means womenkind in general. [12]

hashish 

حشيش hashīsh, hashish. Hashīsh has the literal meaning "dried herb" and "grass" in Arabic. Its earliest record as a nickname for cannabis is in 12th- or 13th-century Arabic.^[15] In English in a traveller's report from Egypt in 1598 it is found in the form "assis". The word is rare in English until the 19th century. The wordform in English today dates from the early 19th century.^[16] [13]

henna, alkanet, alkannin, Alkanna 

حنّاء hinnā, henna. Henna is a reddish natural dye made from the leaves of Lawsonia inermis. The English dates from about 1600 and came directly from Arabic through English-language travellers reports from the Middle East.^[17] [14]. Alkanet dye is a reddish natural dye made from the roots of Alkanna tinctoria and this word is 14th-century English, with a Romance-language diminutive suffix 't', from medieval Latin alcanna | alchanna meaning both "alkanet" and "henna", from Arabic al-hinnā meaning henna.^[18] [15]

hookah (water pipe for smoking)

حقّة huqqa, pot or jar. The word arrived in English from India. The Indian word is ultimately from Arabic. More information at hookah article. [16]

hummus (food recipe)

حمّص himmas, chickpea(s). Chickpeas in medieval Arabic were called himmas^[2] and were a frequently eaten food item.^[19] In the 19th century in Syria and Lebanon the word was commonly pronounced hommos.^[20] It was borrowed into Turkish as humus, and entered English from Turkish in mid-20th century. The Turkish and English hummus means mashed chickpeas mixed with tahini and certain flavourings. In Arabic that is called himmas bil tahina. See also the list's Addendum for Middle Eastern cuisine words. [17]

I[edit]

J[edit]

jar (food or drink container) 

جرّة jarra, an earthenware jar, an upright container made of pottery. First records in English are in 1418 and 1421 as a container for olive oil.^[21] Spanishjarra has 13th-century records.^[8] Arabic jarra is commonplace centuries earlier.^[2] In the medieval Arabic and Spanish, and also in the word's early centuries of use in English, the typical jar was considerably bigger than the typical jar in English today.^[22] [18]

jasmine, jessamine, jasmone

ياسمين yās(a)mīn, jasmine. In medieval Arabic jasmine was well-known.^[2] The word has an early record in the West in southern Italy in an Arabic-to-Latin book translation about year 1240 that mentions flower-oil extracted from jasmine flowers.^[8] In the West, the word was uncommon until the 16th century and the same goes for the plant itself (Jasminum officinale and its relatives).^[23] [19]

jerboa, jird

see gerbil

jinn (mythology) 

الجنّ al-jinn, the jinn. The roles of jinns and ghouls in Arabic folklore are discussed by e.g. Al-Masudi (died 956). (The semantically related English genie is not derived from jinn, though it has been influenced by it through the 1001 Nights tales). [20]

julep (type of drink) 

جلاب julāb, rose water^[2] and a syrupy drink.^[8] Arabic was from Persian gulab = "rose water". In its early use in English it was a syrupy drink.^[24] Like the wordscandy, sugar, and syrup, "julep" arrived in English in late medieval times in association with imports of cane sugar from Arabic-speaking lands. Like syrup, julep's early records in English are mostly in medicine writers.^[24] [21]

jumper (dress or pullover sweater) 

جبّة jubba, a loose outer garment. The word is in 11th-century Italian Latin as jupa = "a jacket of oriental origin".^[8] Mid-12th-century Latin juppum and late-12th-century French jupe meant "jacket". So did the English 14th-century ioupe | joupe, 15th-century iowpe | jowpe, 17th-century jup, juppe, and jump, 18thjupo and jump, 19th jump and jumper.^[25] [22]

Addendum for words that may or may not be of Arabic ancestry[edit]

garbage 

This English word is not found in bygone centuries in French or other languages. The first known record in English is 1422.^[26] Its parentage is usually considered to be uncertain. Some nouns formed by suffixing -age to verbs in late medieval English and not found in French: cartage (1305), leakage (1444lecage), steerage (1399 sterage), stoppage (1465), towage (1327).^[26] Garbage is arguably from English garble = "to sift" (first known record 1393^[26]), which certainly came to English through the Romance languages from Arabic gharbal = "to sift". The forms "garbellage" and "garblage" meaning the garbage or inferior material removed by sifting, are recorded spottily in English from the 14th through 18th centuries and those are considered to be certainly from garble.^[4] [23]

genet/genetta (nocturnal mammal) 

Seen in 13th-century English,^[26] 13th-century French and Catalan, and 12th-century Portuguese.^[8] It is absent from medieval Arabic writings.^[27]Nevertheless an oral dialectical Maghrebi Arabic source for the European word has been suggested. جرنيط jarnait = "genet" is attested in the 19th century in Maghrebi dialect.^[28] But the absence of attestation in Arabic in any earlier century must make Arabic origin questionable. [24]

hazard 

Medieval French hasart | hasard | azard had the primary meaning of a game of dice and especially a game of dice where money was gambled. The early records are in northern French and the first is about year 1150 as hasart,^[8] with multiple records of hasart in northern France about year 1200,^[8] and Anglo-Norman hasart is in England before 1216,^[29] and Anglo-Norman has hasardur and hasardrie at and before 1240,^[29] which is followed by Italian açarabout 1250 with the same meaning as hasart | hasard,^[30] and Italian-Latin azar(r)um and azardum later in the 13th century,^[31] and Spanish azar starting in 1283,^[8] and English hasard about 1300.^[26] According to its etymology summary in a number of today's dictionaries, the French word was descended through Spanish from an unattested Arabic oral dialectical az-zār | az-zahr = "the dice" – but that is an extremely improbable proposition because that word has no record in Arabic with that meaning until the early 19th century.^[32] An alternative proposition, having the advantage of attestation in medieval Arabic, derives it from medieval Arabic يسر yasar = "playing at dice".^[33] Conceivably this might have entered French through the Crusader States of the Levant. The French word is of obscure origin. [25]

Footnotes[edit]

1. Jump up^ The dictionaries used to compile the list are these: Centre National de Ressources Textuelles et Lexicales: Etymologies, Online Etymology Dictionary, Random House Dictionary, Concise Oxford English Dictionary, American Heritage Dictionary, Collins English Dictionary, Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Arabismen im Deutschen: lexikalische Transferenzen vom Arabischen ins Deutsche, by Raja Tazi (year 1998), A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (a.k.a. "NED") (published in pieces between 1888 and 1928), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English (year 1921) by Ernest Weekley. Footnotes for individual words have supplementary other references. The most frequently cited of the supplementary references is Glossaire des mots espagnols et portugais dérivés de l'arabe (year 1869) by Reinhart Dozy.
2. ^ Jump up to:^{a b c d e} A number of large dictionaries were written in Arabic during medieval times. Searchable copies of nearly all of the main medieval Arabic dictionaries are online at Baheth.info and/or AlWaraq.net. One of the most esteemed of the dictionaries is Ismail ibn Hammad al-Jawhari's "Al-Sihah" which is dated around and shortly after year 1000. The biggest is Ibn Manzur's "Lisan Al-Arab" which is dated 1290 but most of its contents were taken from a variety of earlier sources, including 9th- and 10th-century sources. Often Ibn Manzur names his source then quotes from it. Therefore, if the reader recognizes the name of Ibn Manzur's source, a date considerably earlier than 1290 can often be assigned to what is said. A list giving the year of death of a number of individuals who Ibn Manzur quotes from is in Lane'sArabic-English Lexicon, volume 1, page xxx (year 1863). Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon contains much of the main contents of the medieval Arabic dictionaries in English translation. At AlWaraq.net, in addition to searchable copies of medieval Arabic dictionaries, there are searchable copies of a large number of medieval Arabic texts on various subjects.
3. ^ Jump up to:^a b Catalan garbellar = "to sift" has its first record in 1261 while Catalan garbell = "a sieve" has its first record in 1375 – Diccionari.cat. The word was and still is in common use in Catalan. In Spanish there is a not-common word garbillo = "sieve" which is thought likely to have entered the Spanish from the Catalan (but some Spanish reporters think otherwise) – Enciclopedia Universal and grabeler @ CNRTL.fr. An early record in Latin is garbellare = "to sift" in a statute of the city ofMarseille in 1269, with the sifted matter being a dyestuff – Du Cange. The editors of Du Cange add the comment that this Latin word came from Italian garbellare. In Italian in the first half of the 14th century it is spelled both garbell___ and gherbell___ and is used in the context of quality-control of spices, drugs, and dyes – TLIO (in Italian), Pegolotti year 1343 (in Italian). The French grabeler = "to sift drugs or spices" (1439) is believed to come from the Catalan and Italian, and ultimately from the Arabic gharbal – CNRTL.fr.
4. ^ Jump up to:^a b c In English around year 1400 all of the following words referred to sifting and removal of impurities from spices, and they are descended from Arabic gharbala = "sifting": Garbel, Garbelage, Garbelen, Garbelinge, Garbalour, Garbelure, Garbellable, Ungarbled. See the UMich Middle English Dictionary. For example in an Act of Parliament in 1439 applying to English ports where spices were offered for sale, any spices not "trewly and duely garbelyd and clensyd" were subject to "forfaiture of the said Spiceries so yfound ungarbelyd and unclensyd". Garbled meant that the parts of the spice plant that were not part of the spice were removed. Garble was also used as a noun to refer to the refuse removed by garbling; e.g. in an Act of Parliament in 1603-04: "If any of the said Spices... shall be mixed with any Garbles..." – ref: NED. The verb Garble has records in English starting from 1393 documented in the Middle English Dictionary at ref and ref. A Garbler or Garbelour, also 1393, was an official in the City of London who could enter a shop or warehouse to view spices and drugs, and garble them, to check them for compliance with rules against having cheaper stuff mixed in with them. Meanwhile, the early meaning of the English "garbage" (first known record 1422, in London) was the low-grade yet consumable parts of poultry such as the birds' heads, necks and gizzards – ref: MED. Three centuries later the biggest-selling English dictionary of the 18th century, Nathan Bailey's English Dictionary, defined garbage as "the entrails, etc., of cattle", and defined garble as "to cleanse from dross and dirt", and defined garbles as "the dust, soil or filth separated by garbling" – ref. Nathan Bailey says the parent of garbage is garble (together with the suffix -age). One dictionary agreeing with him is Skeat 1888. See also Weekley 1921. Dictionaries disagreeing say instead the parent of garbage is unknown. The influential New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (year 1901) says the word garbage is "of obscure origin". To that dictionary's knowledge, however, the earliest record for garbage is 1430 and the earliest for garble is 1483 (ref: NED), which, if it were true, would imply that "garbage" existed in English prior to the arrival of garble. The fact that garble has records from 1393 makes it easier to believe that garbage came from garble.
5. Jump up^ English verb "garble" in New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (year 1901).
6. ^ Jump up to:^a b Arabic al-qazz = "silk" is a common word in medieval Arabic – see دمقس AND القزّ @ Baheth.info. Latin Gazzatum = "luxurious clothing" is in Latin in 1279 – Du Cange. In medieval Latin that is a rare word and it looks foreign although the -atum part of it is a common Latin suffix. The Latin suffix -atum is the parent of the English noun suffix -ate and means "having properties characteristic of". So gazzatum clothing is clothing having properties of gazz (whatever gazz is). French gaze is pronounced the same as English gazz. French gaze = "high-quality light-weight fabric" is in French from 1461 – CNRTL.fr. It is the parent of English gauze (1561), Spanish gasa (1611), German Gass (1649), German Gaze (1679), Italian garza (1704), Catalan gasa (1736) – Raja Tazi, year 1998 page 201. Excepting tiny quantities, silk was not produced in Latin Europe until the 14th century. Instead almost all the silk fabric of the medieval Latins was imported from Byzantine and Arabic lands, pre-14th century; and importing continued in the 14th and 15th centuries – "Silk in the Medieval World" by Anna Muthesius in The Cambridge History of Western Textiles (year 2003). Hence multiple mercantile routes existed by which an Arabic word for silk could have entered Western languages. A change from 'q' to 'g' in going from Arabic qazz to a Western gazz has parallels in other Arabic loanwords in the West, which are noted by Dozy year 1869 page 15, Devic year 1876 page 123, and Lammens year 1890 page xxvii - xxviii. In medieval Arabic there was also الخزّ al-khazz = "cloth having silk yarn weaved together with wool yarn; fine cloth" – الخزّ @ Baheth.info, Lane's Lexicon page 731 – and an Arabic 'kh' converted to a medieval Latin 'g' has parallels in Algorithm, Magazine, and Galingale. As a separate idea, some of today's dictionaries report that the late medieval French name gaze originated from the name of the Middle Eastern coastal town Gaza. This is an old idea which can be found in Gilles Menage's Dictionnaire Etymologique year 1670. But the idea comes without supporting evidence and moreover the historical records are such that "the existence of a textile industry in medieval Gaza is not assured" – CNRTL.fr.
7. Jump up^ An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English (1921), by Ernest Weekley.
8. ^ Jump up to:^{a b c d e f g h i j k} More details at CNRTL.fr Etymologie in French language. Centre National de Ressources Textuelles et Lexicales (CNRTL) is a division of theFrench National Centre for Scientific Research.
9. Jump up^ The word Jird is rare in the European languages until the 20th century. One early record is the following English from Travels, or, Observations Relating to Several Parts of Barbary and the Levant, by Thomas Shaw, year 1738 (and translated to French 1743): "The Jird and the Jerboa are two little harmless animals which burrow in the ground.... All the legs of the Jird are nearly of the same length, with each of them five toes; whereas the fore-feet of the Barbary Jerboa are very short and armed only with three."
10. Jump up^ "Ghoul" in NED (year 1900).
11. Jump up^ Al-Masudi's 10th-century Arabic, together with modern French translation, is online in chapter 33 of Al-Masudi's Prairies d'Or.
12. Jump up^ Book The Giraffe in History and Art by Berthold Laufer (year 1928), chapter headed "The Giraffe among the Arabs and Persians" and chapter headed "The Giraffe in the Middle Ages".
13. Jump up^ Dictionnaire Étymologique de l'Ancien Français (DÉAF) has records for the guitar word in French in the later 13th century with spellings quitarre, guiterne andkitaire. Early records in Italian and Spanish are cited in "Lute, Gittern, & Citole" by Crawford Young, a medieval history article published in A Performer's Guide to Medieval Music (year 2000). Chitarra appears in the Italian writer Dante at or before 1307 (Dante's text is online) and another early record in Italian is around 1300 aschitarre in a poem entitled Intelligenza (whose relevant verse in Italian and English translation is online). Additional early records in Italian, dated 1313, 1324-28, and 1334, are at chitarra @ TLIO.ovi.cnr.it. Italian chitarre was pronounced ki-tar-re. Italian etymology dictionaries say the Italian word came from medieval Greek kithára– e.g. Etimo.it. The first surviving record of the guitar word in Spanish is as guitarra in a poem entitled Libro de buen amor dated 1330-1343. Spanish etymology dictionaries say the Spanish word originated in Spain from an unrecorded Andalusian Arabic qītāra – e.g. Diccionario RAE. But that claim by the Spanish etymology dictionaries has to be doubted for the reason that forms of the word have multiple records in France and Italy for many decades beforehand. That is, the chronology of the records clearly admits the possibility that guitarra entered Spanish from French and Italian. In France (the south of France particularly) and Italy from broadly around that time period there are many instances in which a word-initial /k/ sound got altered to a /g/ sound. Four examples that later ended up in English are "grease", "gourd", "gulf" and noun "grate" (whose etymologies are briefly summarized by English dictionaries and more details on them are given in French dictionaries at CNRTL, DÉAF, and DMF, plus Ducange).
14. Jump up^ According to minority opinion, the word "guitar" does not have Arabic ancestry. The basis for this opinion is, firstly, the scantiness of records of such a name in medieval Arabic and the abundance of records for guitar-type instruments under other names in medieval Arabic; and, secondly, the medieval Greek kithára (and medieval Latin cithara), meaning a plucked string instrument, has the potential to be a non-Arabic source for the French quitarre (c. 1275) and Italian chitarre (c. 1300); and, thirdly, the guitar word has numerous records in French and Italian for 50 years before it is on record in Spanish, which undermines an hypothesized route of transmission via Arabic Spain. Among the experts with this opinion is Reinhart Dozy, who omits guitarra from his 1869 book Glossaire des mots espagnols et portugais dérivés de l'arabe (ref). Records of qītāra | qīthār are found in Arabic after guitar had become established in the Romance languages. In Dozy's 1881 book,Supplement Aux Dictionnaires Arabes Volume 2, Dozy attributes the post-medieval Arabic qītāra | qīthār to borrowing from the Romance languages (ref). Others with this minority opinion include Concise OED (2010), NED (1900), Henri Lammens (1890), Friedrich Diez (1864). The experts at CNRTL.fr do not have the minority opinion but they are unable to cite a medieval Arabic record of the form qītāra | qīthār. A couple of records do exist for a medieval Andalusian Arabic kaythara = "lyre or plucked string instrument". One of these is in an approximately 12th-century Latin-Arabic dictionary written in Spain by someone who was more proficient in Latin than Arabic: Glossarium Latino-Arabicum. The other too is in a Latin-Arabic dictionary written by a native Spanish speaker, estimated dated around 1300:Vocabulista in Arabico. Those two Latin dictionaries are not fully reliable about Arabic, and there is no record of kaythara in actual Arabic writers. Also the formkaythara, with a kay- or kai-, is relatively "unsuitable to be the immediate etymon of the Romance word" in Spain (qītāra would be more suitable) – F. Corriente year 2008 page 320 (see also F. Corriente year 1997). Several very large entirely Arabic dictionaries were written in medieval times (including the Lisan al-Arab which occupies 20 printed book volumes) and none of them has a word of the form kaythara | kīthār | qītāra | qīthār | qithār etc. The geographer Al-Masudi (died 956) wrote about the musical instruments that were used by the medieval Greeks. He stated that he had gotten his information from a certain medieval Greek informant. In that context, Al-Masudi wrote that القيثارة al-qīthāra is a musical instrument with twelve strings used by the medieval Greeks (ref). Some manuscript copies of Al-Masudi's book have it mis-spelled القشاوة al-qishāwa, which is signalling that the transcriber was unacquainted with the word (ref). Other than that, no such or similar word is known in medieval Arabic. The proposition that the Western word descends via Spanish from Arabic goes back to Gilles Ménage's year 1670 Dictionnaire Etymologique(ref) which for its evidence noted the presence of the word in 17th century Arabic – but not in medieval Arabic. In medieval Greek kithara[s] was common as a name for a lyre and more loosely a plucked string instrument – some examples are in the Suda compilation.
15. Jump up^ Book The Herb: Hashish versus medieval Muslim society, by Franz Rosenthal, year 1971, pages 41–45.
16. Jump up^ "Hashish" in NED (year 1901).
17. Jump up^ Henne pronounced hen-ne and meaning henna is in Latin in the 13th and 14th centuries – ref, ref. But it is not common in medieval Latin – ref, ref. The word is not on record in French until 1541 and English until c. 1600. Today's English dictionaries report that the English was borrowed directly from Arabic hinnā, because the early English records are in travelers' reports and generally do not conform well to the Latin spelling – ref: NED. Henna was in use in the Mediterranean region from antiquity and the name for henna in classical Latin was cyprus (kupros in ancient Greek).
18. Jump up^ The active dye chemical in both alkanet and henna is a naphthoquinone derivative (alkannin in alkanet, lawsone in henna) and the two dyes are similar in several ways. The name alcanna | alchanna = "alkanet dye" has late medieval records in Latin, and some Romance languages, and English. Examples from 14th- and 15th-century English are in the MED. The same word alcanna | alchanna was also in use in late medieval Latin meaning "henna". An example noted by Raja Tazi (year 1998) is that in Gerard of Cremona's Arabic-to-Latin translation of Ibn Sina's Canon of Medicine, Ibn Sina's Arabic hinnā was translated to Latin alcanna. An example of the Latin spelling alchana meaning henna is in Simon of Genoa's medical dictionary, dated late 13th century. In the Arabic alphabet there are two letters h, one like a Latin and English h, and the other with a stronger sound, and the h of al-hinnā is the strongly pronounced one, which helps explain why it got rendered as 'ch' or 'c' in Latin (the same rendering is seen in the medieval Latin wordform Machomatus meaning the Prophet Mahommed – ref). The rendering most likely originated in Italy. Not Spain. In Italy in Latin, and Italian, if it had been borrowed as hanna there would have been much tendency to pronounce it "anna" (still true in Italian today). Cf the sound /h/ in "The sounds of Latin", page 86-87. The word was in medieval Italian as alcan[n]a = "henna" – ref: TLIO (in Italian). This was not in Spanish, where the form was alheña | alfeña = "henna". Medieval Spanish has no examples where an Arabic letter h got converted to Spanish 'c' or /k/ sound – ref: Dozy 1869 andCorriente 2008. And medieval Spanish has no records of alcana or alcaneta meaning henna or alkanet – Dozy 1869 and Corriente 2008 and Maíllo Salgado 1998 (pages 223-224). The alkanet dye plant Alkanna tinctoria was in use in the Mediterranean region as a dye since antiquity (was called anchusa in classical Latin). In medieval Arabic it had several names, none related to al-hinnā – see الشنجار @ Baheth.info and e.g., e.g..
19. Jump up^ Book Medieval Arab Cookery: Essays and Translations, by M. Rodinson, A.J. Arberry and C. Perry, year 2001.
20. Jump up^ The Arabic dictionaries spell it "himmas" but the people pronounce it "hommos", said Henri Lammens, who lived in Beirut in the 19th century – Remarques sur les mots français dérivés de l'arabe, by Henri Lammens, year 1890, page 93. It was pronounced "homos" in Egypt in the 18th century – Flora Aegyptiaco-Arabica, by Peter Forskal, year 1775, page LXXI (in Latin).
21. Jump up^ "Jar" in the Middle English Dictionary: a quote dated 1421. The same dictionary has another quote for "Jar" dated 1418.
22. Jump up^ "Jar" in NED.
23. Jump up^ Jasmine is rare in late medieval Latin. In French it is not found until the early 16th century, except for one isolated instance in the 14th century as jasimin –CNRTL.fr. Spanish and Catalan have their first instances in the 14th century while the earliest in Portuguese is about 1500 – DEAF. It is in Italian in the 14th century in the form gelsomino – TLIO (in Italian). During the 16th century the plant became common in gardens in western Europe, including England. An English botany book in 1597 stated correctly that the plant was unknown to the ancient Greeks and Romans – Gerarde's Herball, 1597. In late medieval southern Italy the jasmine flower-oil was sold under a Latin name of the form sambacus | zambacca which was from Arabic zanbaq = "jasmine flower-oil"; crossref sambac.
24. ^ Jump up to:^a b "Julep" in New English Dictionary on Historical Principles. Similarly in An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, by Walter W. Skeat, year 1888.
25. Jump up^ The Middle English Dictionary has examples of the late medieval English use of joupe and jupon as kinds of jackets. For their medieval French and Italian antecedents see jupe @ CNRTL.fr, jupon @ CNRTL.fr and Joppe @ Raja Tazi 1998. The medieval French jupe was a jacket and could be a man's or a woman's jacket. The English jupe | jup | juppe could be a man's or a woman's jacket too. Jupe continued in use in Scots English as late as the mid-19th century, but in standard written English it went extinct or very rare about two centuries earlier – ref: NED. In a German-to-English dictionary dated 1706 the German Joppe or Juppe was translated as "a jupo, jacket, or jump" – ref: Ernest Weekley. Bailey's English Dictionary in 1726 defined a jump as "a short coat; also a sort of bodice for women" –ref. Webster's English Dictionary in 1828 defined a jump as "a kind of loose waistcoat worn by females" – ref. Webster's English Dictionary in 1913 defined a jumpas "a kind of loose jacket for men" – ref – and defined a jumper as "a loose upper garment; a sort of blouse worn by workmen over their ordinary dress to protect it" –ref. New English Dictionary on Historical Principles published in 1901 defined a jumper in year 1901 as "a kind of loose outer jacket reaching to the hips, made of canvas, serge, coarse linen, etc., and worn by sailors, truckmen, etc." – ref: NED. That dictionary has more on jup, jupe, jump, and jumper as jackets. Most dictionaries say: jumper = "jacket" is from jump = "jacket" which is from jupo | jup = "jacket". Some dictionaries also say: the alteration from the older jup | jupe to the newer jump can have occurred through the influence of the unrelated common English word jump. Such an alteration – where the less-common word becomes phonetically 'contaminated' by a somewhat-comparable more-common word – is called assimilation by "folk etymology". Dictionaries reporting in favor of the ultimate ancestry of jumper in the medieval Arabic "jubba" include NED (1901), Weekley (1921), Klein (1966), Partridge (1966), Ayto (2005), Concise OED (2010), Collins English (2010), Webster's New World (2010), and American Heritage (2010), although some of these also flag the case as incompletely established. It is universally accepted that medieval English jupe descended from Arabic jubba but in the judgment of some dictionaries the descent of English jumper from English jupe is incompletely documented.
26. ^ Jump up to:^{a b c d e} As documented in the Middle English Dictionary (the "MED").
27. Jump up^ Glossaire des mots espagnols et portugais dérivés de l'arabe by R. Dozy & W.H. Engelmann. 430 pages. Published in 1869.
28. Jump up^ Journal Asiatique, year 1849, vol I page 541.
29. ^ Jump up to:^a b Hasart in the Anglo-Norman Dictionary, quoting from the text Le Petit Plet which is dated early 13th century before year 1216. The Anglo-Norman Dictionaryalso documents from before year 1216 Anglo-Norman hasardur = "person who plays the hasard dice game", and from circa 1240 Anglo-Norman hasardrie = "hazardry, i.e. hazarding money in the dice game called hazard". These records underscore that the root-word was well-established in Norman French before it started to show up in Italian (first known record c. 1250) or Spanish (first known record 1283).
30. Jump up^ See azaro @ Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (TLIO). Relatedly, Italian has zaroso = "hazardous" in 1304 (ref) where Italian -oso equals English -ous.
31. Jump up^ Du Cange's Glossary of Medieval Latin.
32. Jump up^ With regard to proposed ancestry of "hazard" in an Arabic az-zār | az-zahr meaning dice, Walter Skeat (1888) says the Arabic is "a word only found in the vulgar speech" in Arabic and that's why it's hard to establish it, but he believes Persian zar -> Arabic al-zar [equals Arabic az-zar] -> Spanish azar -> French hasard -> English hazard. The same judgment is made by today's Merriam-Webster Dictionary and Concise OED. The earliest known record of Arabic az-zar | az-zahr = "dice" is in the early 19th century in oral dialect in Egypt, whereas the Western azar | hasard = "game of dice; hazard" is in French, Italian, Spanish and English since the 12th and 13th centuries. Hence Ernest Weekley (1921) says Arabic "az-zahr (al-zahr) is a word of doubtful authority which may have been borrowed from Spanishazar or from Italian zara." John Florio's year 1611 Italian-English dictionary has Italian zara = "dice" (ref) and Florio also has Italian azara = "hazard" (ref). Marcel Devic (1876) notes zahr may have entered Arabic post-medievally from Turkish zar = "dice". In year 1680, F. Mesgnien Meninski published a multi-volume dictionary of Turkish, Arabic and Persian. It lists زار zār = "dice" as a Turkish word, and Turkish only (and it does not have زهر zahr = "dice" in any of the three languages) – ref. Dice is called zar in today's Azerbaijani, Armenian, Bulgarian, Greek, Romanian, and Albanian, as well as Turkish. Thus the word is in in all the languages of the formerOttoman Empire and has to have been for some centuries, while the Arabic zahr has not been in writing as a dice until the 19th century, and this goes to support a judgment that the word in Arabic is a late borrowing from Turkish.
33. Jump up^ The rootword يسر yasar = "playing at dice" and "gambling" is in the medieval Arabic dictionaries at Baheth.info. It is also in Richardson's 1852 Arabic–English dictionary (ref), though not in the Arabic dictionaries of today. The idea of deriving the medieval French hasart from the Arabic yasar is mentioned atEtymonline.com, CNRTL.fr, and Etymologiebank.nl.