List of English words of Arabic origin (A-Z) part 2

K[edit]

Kermes (insect genus), kermes (dye), kermes oak (tree), kermesite (mineral): قرمز qirmiz, dye from kermes-type scale insects including (but not limited to) today's Kermes insects. The bodies of several scale insect species produce a red dye that in medieval times was commercially valuable for dyeing textiles. Several medieval Arabic dictionaries say al-qirmiz is an "Armenian red dye".^[2]The word was in use in Arabic for centuries before it started to be used in the West, and was adopted in the West in the 13th century with the same meaning as the Arabic.^[3]^[4] In the West in the later 16th century the meaning began to be narrowed to today's Kermes species. [1]
khat: قات qāt, the plant Catha edulis and the stimulant obtained from it. Khat was borrowed directly from Arabic qāt in the mid 19th century. The technical botany name Catha was borrowed from the same Arabic in the mid 18th century (botanist was Peter Forskal). The technical chemistry names cathine andcathinone are 20th century from Catha. [2]
kohl (cosmetics): كحل kohl, finely powdered galena, stibnite, and similar sooty-colored powder used for eye-shadow, eye-liner, and mascara. The word with that meaning was in travellers' reports in English for centuries before it was adopted natively in English.^[5] [3]

L[edit]

lacquer: لكّ lakk, lac, or any resin used for varnishing. The Arabic came from the Sanskrit lākh = "lac", a particular kind of resin, native in India, used to make a varnish and also used as a red dye. The Arabic entered later-medieval Latin as lacca | laca.^[6] [4]. Two lesser-seen varnishing resins with Arabic word-descent are sandarac^[7] and elemi.^[8] [5]
lazurite (mineral): See azure. [6]
lemon: ليمون līmūn, lemon. The cultivation of lemons, limes, and bitter oranges was introduced to the Mediterranean region by the Arabs in the mid-medieval era. The ancient Greeks & Romans knew the citron, but not the lemon, lime, or orange.^[9] Ibn al-'Awwam in the late 12th century distinguished ten kinds of citrus fruits grown in Andalusia and spelled the lemon as اللامون al-lāmūn. Abdallatif al-Baghdadi (died 1231) distinguished almost as many different citrus fruits in Egypt and spelled the lemon as الليمون al-līmūn.^[10] The Arabic word came from Persian.^[11] The lemon tree's native origin appears to be in India.^[9] [7]
lime (fruit): ليم līm, any citrus fruit,^[10] a back-formation or a collective noun associated with ليمون līmūn; see lemon. Spanish, Portuguese & Italian lima = "lime (fruit)".[8]. Today's English "lime" has become a color-name as well as a fruit. The color-name originated by reference to the fruit. It can be noted in passing that all the following English color-names are descended from Arabic words (not necessarily Arabic color-words): amber (color), apricot (color), aubergine (color),azure (color), coffee (color), crimson (color), carmine (color), henna (color), lemon (color), lime (color), orange (color), saffron (color), scarlet (color),tangerine (color).
luffa: لوف lūf,^[12] luffa. Entered European botany nomenclature from Egypt in 1638.^[12] The luffa is a tropical plant which was under cultivation with irrigation in Egypt at the time. The name has been in English botany books since the mid 18th century as Luffa. In the later 19th century it re-entered English in non-botanical discourse as "Loofah" referring to the luffa scrubbing sponge.^[13] [9]
lute: العود al-ʿaūd, the oud. Al-ʿaūd was one of the chief musical instruments of the medieval Arabs.^[14] The European lute word, a word now in all European languages, has its earliest records in the mid 13th century in Catalan and Spanish. Spanish has alod in 1254, alaut in about 1330, laud in 1343.^[15] The Catalan form was laut. "The Portuguese form pt:Alaúde clearly shows the Arabic origin."^[16] The earliest unambiguous record in English is in the 2nd half of the 14th century (Middle English Dictionary). [10]

M[edit]

macramé: مقرمة miqrama, an embroidered cloth covering^[2] (formally related to qaram = "to nibble persistently"). The path to English is said to be: Arabic -> Turkish -> Italian -> French -> English. 19th-century English. [11]
magazine: مخازن makhāzin, storehouses (from Arabic root khazan, to store). Used in Latin with that meaning in 1228 in Marseille, which is the earliest known record in a Western language.^[17] Still used that way today in French, Italian, Catalan, and Russian. Sometimes used that way in English in the 16th to 18th centuries, but more commonly in English a magazine was an arsenal, a gunpowder store, and later a receptacle for storing bullets. A magazine in the publishing sense of the word started out in English in the 17th century meaning a store of information about military or navigation subjects.^[18] [12]
marcasite: مرقشيثا marqashīthā, iron sulfide. Occurs in Arabic in a 9th-century minerals book,^[19] and was used by Al-Razi (died c. 930),^[20] and Ibn Sina (died 1037)^[19]and Al-Biruni (died 1048),^[21] among others. The earliest in a Western language seems to be in an Arabic-to-Latin translation by Gerard of Cremona in the later 12th century.^[15] In modern English, marcasite is defined scientifically as orthorhombic iron sulfide, but marcasite jewelry is jewelry made from isometriciron sulfide.^[22] [13]
massicot: مسحقونيا masḥaqūniyā | مسحوقونيا masḥūqūniyā, a glazing material applied in the manufacture of pottery.^[23] In today's English massicot is defined as orthorhombic lead monoxide (PbO). The Western word's history starts with late medieval Latin massacumia, which was a lead-based ceramics glazing material in Italy in the late 13th century, and came from Arabic masḥaqūniyā (mas-ha-qun-iya) meaning approximately the same.^[23] Historically, in the late medieval and early modern West, the most common context of use of lead monoxide (including massicot) was in the manufacture of lead-based ceramics glazes, and, later, lead glass. [14]
mattress, matelasse: مطرح matrah, a large cushion or rug for lying on. In Arabic the sense evolved out of the sense "something thrown down" from Arabic root tarah = "to throw". Classical Latin matta = "mat" is no relation. The Arabic word entered Italian and Latin in the 13th century and spread into French and English in the 14th century. The mattress word at that time usually meant a padded under-blanket, "a quilt to lie upon".^[24] [15], [16]
mohair, moiré: المخيّر al-mokhayyar, high-quality cloth made from fine goat hair (from Arabic root khayar = "choosing, preferring"). Mohair from the hair of Angora goats in Ankara province in Turkey in the early 16th century was the original cloth named mohair in the West, although earlier mohair-type cloth had been imported from the Middle East under the name camlet.^[25] Earliest record in the West is 1542 Italian.^[15] Early English was spelled "mocayare", starting 1570. The mutation in English to "mohaire" is first seen in 1619.^[26] [17]. Moiré means a shimmering visual effect from an interweaved or grating structure. It started out in French as a mutation of mohair. [18]
monsoon, typhoon: These words referred to wind and rain events off the coasts of India and China in their earliest use in Western languages and are seen first in Portuguese in the early 16th century. Arabic sea-merchants were active in the East Indies long before the Portuguese arrived – see e.g. Islam in the Philippines andcamphor and benzoin in this list. موسم mawsim, season, used in Arabic for anything that comes round once a year (such as festive season) and used by Arab sailors in the East Indies for the seasonal sailing winds.^[27] طوفان tūfān, a big rainstorm, a deluge, and used in the Koran for Noah's Flood.^[28] More about the early history of the two words among European sailors in the East Indies is in A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, and of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical and Discursive, by Yule and Burnell (year 1903). [19] [20]
mufti (dress): المفتي al-muftī , mufti. The phrase 'mufti day' is sometimes used instead of 'own clothes day' in some English speaking schools to mean a day when students and teachers can wear their own clothes rather than the institution's uniform/smart clothes. The term originated in the British Army in the early 19th century.[21]
mummy: موميا mūmiyā, a bituminous embalming substance, and secondly a corpse embalmed with the substance. The late medieval West borrowed the Arabic word in both of those senses.^[29] Then post-medievally in the West it was extended to a corpse preserved by desiccation (drying out), which is how the famous Egyptian mummies have been preserved.^[30] [22]
muslin: موصلي mūsilī, fine lightweight fabric made in Mosul in Mesopotamia, usually cotton, sometimes linen. The word entered the West with that meaning in the 16th and early 17th century. The fabric was imported from Aleppo by Italians who called it mussola and mussolina. The suffix -ina was an Italian addition. In Italian-ina is a diminutive (communicates lightweight). The earliest record in English is muslina in a traveller's report from Aleppo in 1609.^[31] [23]

Words which may or may not be of Arabic origin[edit]

lilac: It is well documented that the common lilac tree was originally brought to Western Europe directly from Istanbul in the later 16th century. One of the earliest records of the word in the West is from the botanist Carolus Clusius who in 1576 in Latin said the "Lilac" tree came from the Turks.^[32] The earliest known record in any vernacular Western language is 1596 in English.^[33] Earliest French is 1605.^[15] The early Latin, English and French had the exclusive meaning of the common lilac tree, Syringa vulgaris. The tree's native place of origin was the Balkans. The word is widely taken as being descended from a Persian word for blueish color. The Persian is not attested as a tree or a flower; it is attested as a color. A route of intermediation involving Arabic is a possibility.^[34] [24]
macabre: Records begin in late medieval French (1376). All the early records involve "the very specific phrase danse macabre, which denoted a dance in which a figure representing death enticed people to dance with him until they dropped down dead."^[35] Non-Arabic candidates for the origin of the French exist but have semantic and phonetic weaknesses.^[15]^[20] The meaning can be fitted to the Arabic مقابر maqābir = "graves" (plural of maqbara). Medieval Portuguesealmocavar = "cemetery" is certainly from Arabic al-maqābir = "the graves".^[36]^[37] But there is no known historical context for a transfer of the Arabic (via any pathway) into the French danse macabre. That is a major weakness. [25]
mafia: Mafia comes from Sicilian mafiusu. Further etymology uncertain and disputed. Some propose an Arabic root for mafiusu; others say the word history prior to 19th century is unknown. [26]
mask, masquerade, mascara, masque: Late medieval Italian maschera = "mask" is the source for the French, English and Spanish set of words.^[38] The source for the Italian (first known record circa 1350) is highly uncertain. One possibility is the Arabic precedent مسخرة maskhara = "buffoon, jester".^[36] In the context where mask was used, "the sense of entertainment is the usual one in old authors";^[16] see Carnival of Venice, Masquerade Ball, Mascherata. [27]
massage: The English comes from French. The French is first recorded in 1779 as a verb masser = "to massage" which then produced the noun massage starting in 1808. The origin of the French has not been explained. Perhaps from Arabic مسّ mass = "to touch". Another possibility is from Portuguese amassar = "to knead" and Spanish amasar | masar = "to knead"^[39] (which are descended from classical Latin massa = "mass, lump of material, also kneaded dough"). Most of the early records in French are found in accounts of travels in the Middle East.^[15] The practice of massage was common in the Middle East for centuries before it became common in the West in the mid-to-late 19th century; see Turkish bath. But the Arabic word for massage was a different word (tamsīd | dallak | tadlīk). The fact that the early records in French did not use the Arabic word for massage seems to preclude the hypothesis that the word they did use was borrowed from Arabic. [28]
mizzen-mast: Mizzen (or mizen) is a type of sail or position of a sail mast on a ship. English is traceable to early-14th-century Italian mezzana.^[15] Most dictionaries say the Italian word was a derivation from the classical Latin word medianus = "median", even though the mizzen was positioned to the rear of the ship. The alternative is: "It is possible that the Italian word, taken as meaning "middle", is really adopted from Arabic ميزان mīzān = "balance". "The mizen is, even now, a sail that 'balances,' and the reef in a mizen is still called the 'balance'-reef." "^[40] The carrack sailing ship mentioned earlier, in its early-15th-century form at least, had a mizzen. [29]
mortise: The word's origin in 13th-century France is without an explanation in terms of French or Latin. Some dictionaries mention an Arabic hypothesis. [30]

Footnotes[edit]

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.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b 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.
Jump up^ A number of related but distinct scale-insect species yield comparable but distinct red dyes. Kermes in English today refers to one of these, but the medieval Arabic name qirmiz usually referred to a different one of these -- the one now called in English "Armenian cochineal", aka "Old World cochineal" obtained from insects of the genus Porphyrophora (different from the genus Kermes). Some examples of medieval Arabic writers who mention qirmiz and whose works are online in Arabic in text-searchable format at Alwaraq.net: Ibn Duraid (died 933), Ibn Abd Rabbih (died 940), Al-Istakhri (died 957). Living in southern Spain, Ibn Sida (died 1066) wrote: "Qirmizis Armenian red dye. The dye is said to come from juice of worms in the Iranian and Armenian part of the world. The word is Arabicized Persian." – Ibn Sida's Arabic Dictionary @ AlWaraq.net. The word starts in the 13th century in the Western languages. In the 16th century in a book about the dyeing industry written in Italian in 1548 by Giovanventura Rosetti, the name for kermes was grana while the name for Old World cochineal was cremesi – ref: Cochineal Red: The Art History of a Color, by Elena Phipps, year 2010, page 31 and footnote 27 on page 47. More history in "The Insect Dyes of Western and West-Central Asia", by R.A. Donkin, year 1977, 33 pages.
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 (also medieval French cremesy), Italian chermisi | cremisi, Spanish carmesí. The word-form kermes entered English and French in the 16th century from Spanish quermes and/or from Italian chermes (pronounced kermes) – kermes @ NED, CNRTL.fr.
Jump up^ English traveller in the Middle East year 1615: "They put between the eyelids and the eye a certain black powder with a fine long pencil, made of a mineral calledalcohole, which... do better set forth the whiteness of the eye." – ref. Similar travellers' reports in English are in ref: Algeria 1738, ref: Yemen 1794, and ref: Egypt 1877.
Jump up^ In Arabic Ibn Sina writing around year 1025 said lak was a resin from a plant – ref: بولس هو صمغ حشيشة. The book Mustaʿīnī by Ibn Baklarish dated around year 1100 said lakk could refer to either the resin from a tree or the resin from the lac scale insect – reported in Dozy, year 1869. Examples of late medieval Latin lacca | lacaare in UMich MED (13th- and 14th-century Latin), Du Cange (14th century), and Alphita Medical Dictionary (15th century) (which also has the corrupt form lacta). Today's Italian, Spanish & Portuguese lacca | laca meaning lacquer go back to medieval dates in those languages. Catalan laca dates from 1249 – Diccionari.cat. French lacque dates from about 1400 and French also has lac, lache, and lacca with late medieval dates meaning lac and lacquer – Dictionnaire du Moyen Français. The English lac and lacquer are given 16th-century start dates in English. English has some 15th century records in the form lacca in Latin-to-English medical translations – MED. When the Europeans sailed to India in the 16th century, they met the word lākh spoken by the Indians meaning the lac resin, and they imported the lac resin directly from India to Europe. Since the word was already in Portuguese and the other European languages before they sailed, it is incorrect or disputable to say (as some dictionaries do) that the word lac came to English directly from India (compare American Heritage Dictionary and Random House Dictionary for "lac" atTheFreeDictionary.com).
Jump up^ Europeans got all their sandarac resin from the Arab lands, primarily from Morocco, and the Arabic word سندروس sandarūs is almost certainly the source for the European sandarac resin word. The 11th-century Arabic encyclopedia The Canon of Medicine by Ibn Sina uses the word sandarūs to mean a tree resin – ref: سندروس ... هو صمغ شجرة. A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (year 1914) says: "New Latin sandaracha Arabum represents Arabic sandarus (Dozy, from P. de Alcalá 1505), also sandalus (Freytag, from Golius); but the Arabic word cannot be native Arabic" – ref: NED. Simon of Genoa in Latin in the late 13th century saidsandaracha means arsenic sulfide, yellow or red but he added that in Arabic the word means varnishing resin – ref (in Latin). In the vernacular languages in the West the sandarac resin word appears to begin in the early to mid-16th century in Spanish and Italian (see Merrifield year 1849), from which it was borrowed a century later into English (ref: NED). Pedro de Alcala a.k.a. Petri Hispani (1505) said Spanish barnis (varnish) is sandaros in Arabic – ref. Andrés Laguna (died 1559) said Spanishgrassa, "no different from juniper resin", is called "sandaraca" in Arabic – ref1, ref2. The Arabic word sandarūs might have come down from ancient Greeksandaracha. The Greek and also the classical and medieval Latin sandaraca meant red arsenic sulfide and red lead and it was employed as a red pigment. Sandarac resin has a light yellow color. Ibn Al-Baitar (died 1248) said sandarūs is a "yellow resin" – ref. But possibly the Arabic sandarūs might have started out referring to some other tree resin with a red color (see e.g.). At Dictionary.Reference.com the Western resin-word sandarac is derived from the medieval Latin sandaraca (without Arabic intermediation) which is correct with regard to the word's form but not with regard to the semantics because the medieval Latin sandaraca was not a resin.
Jump up^ Two instances in medieval Arabic of اللامي al-lāmī meaning a resin are in Lammens year 1890, page 288. The earliest known record in the West is gumi elemipublished in 1488 in Compendium Aromatariorum by Saladinus of Ascoli in southeastern Italy – ref. Another early record is a publication in Rome in Latin in 1517 –ref: CNRTL.fr. These records can be taken to indicate that the transfer to the West was through Italian sea merchants on the Mediterranean. The elemi resin in Arabic may have originally came from the East Indies. One of Lammens' medieval sources said it came "from Yemen or from the Indies". But Yemen was likely just a waystation or transit-point for goods brought across the Indian Ocean at the time. The word was rare in Arabic both medievally and later. In Europe around year 1700 it was said by Nicholas Lemery and others that (1) "true" elemi comes from Ethiopia and Yemen and (2) a different elemi comes from America – ref. Today's elemi comes from a tree native to the Philippines. Thus, "elemi" has referred to different resins over the centuries. In English today a derived chemical name is elemicin.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b Origin of Cultivated Plants by Alphonse de Candolle (year 1885), pages 178–181 for lemon and lime, pages 183–188 for orange, page 188 for mandarin orange. Further details in "Études sur les noms arabes des végétaux: l'oranger et ses congénères", by J.J. Clément-Mullet in Journal Asiatique sixième série Tome XV, pages 17 to 41, year 1870. Al-Masudi writing in the 940s (AD) said that the orange tree (shajar al-nāranj) had been introduced to Arabic-speaking lands only a few decades previously. He does not mention the lemon, and from other evidence it seems the lemon had not yet arrived in Al-Masudi's time.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b "Études sur les noms arabes des végétaux: l'oranger et ses congénères", by J.J. Clément-Mullet in Journal Asiatique sixième série Tome XV, pages 17 to 41, year 1870.
Jump up^ In the Persian language in the mid 11th century the writer Nasir Khusraw used the Persian word for lemon, لیمو līmu (ref: section on Tripoli: in Persian, in English translation, pages 6-7). In Arabic the records for the word lemon are hard to find reliably until the 12th century.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b "Luffa" in Etymologisches Wörterbuch der botanischen Pflanzennamen, by Helmut Genaust year 1996. The first known occurrence of the plantname "Luffa" in a Western language is in the botanist Johann Veslingius, who visited Egypt in 1628 and afterwards published drawings and a description of the Luffa aegyptiaca plant. Veslingius wrote that the plant was in cultivation around Cairo, was called "Luff | Luffa" in Arabic, and was used both as an edible cucumber and as a scrubber. Veslingius called it "Luffa Arabum" and "Egyptian Cucumber" – De Plantis Aegyptiis, by Johann Veslingius, year 1638 page 48 (in Latin). In 1706 the botanist Joseph Pitton de Tournefort introduced the formal botany genus name "Luffa". He referred to Veslingius's earlier description and reiterated that "Luffa Arabum" is a plant from Egypt in the cucumber family – Tournefort year 1706 in French. The first known use of "Luffa" in English is by a botanist who cites Tournefort, Philip Miller year 1768. In 1761 the botanist Peter Forsskål visited Egypt and noted that the luffa plant was called لوف lūf in Arabic – Flora Aegyptiaco-Arabica, by Peter Forskal, year 1775, page LXXV (in Latin). In Arabic the name lūf has also designated some other plants unrelated to the luffa. In today's Arabic the luffa plant is more usually called līf, which associates with the very common Arabic word līf = "fiber" and alludes to the use of the luffa as a scrubber and not as a vegetable.
Jump up^ English "loofah" in NED.
Jump up^ A History of Arabian Music to the 13th Century, by Henry George Farmer, year 1929, 230 pages. See ʿūd in the book's Page Index (the book's merit is as a collection into English of many short extracts from different medieval Arabic documents). Most medieval Arabic music-making involved human singing, and al-ʿaūd was usually a preferred supporting instrument.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g 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.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b Reported in An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, by Walter W. Skeat, year 1888. Downloadable.
Jump up^ Magazeni = "magazine, i.e. storehouse" has several records in the 13th century in Italy in Latin, including 1234 in Venice – Raja Tazi 1998. Raja Tazi notes that the seaport of Venice at that time was in regular trading with the Arabic seaports of Ceuta, Béjaïa, Tunis, Oran, etc. The same was true of the seaport of Marseille, where the first record of magazenum (1228) occurs in a context of commerce by Marseille citizens in North African seaports – CNRTL.fr. Records in Catalan begin 1255 –magatzem @ Diccionari.cat. Regarding the Catalan magatzem = "magazine", its letter 't' is attributable to the way that 'z' is pronounced in the Italian word, like how English "pizza" is pronounced "peetza". The spelling magazzino in Italian is on record from the first half of the 14th century (seaport of Pisa year 1318 has magazeno –TLIO). In Sicily the word is found in the seaport of Palermo in 1287 as machasseno and in seaport of Messina in 1284 as mahazenis – ref: Arabismi Medievali di Sicilia by Girolamo Caracausi, year 1983 on page 272 and page 273. Those and other early evidences imply that the word magazine came to the seaports of Italy and Provence and Catalonia directly from North Africa, and did not come from Spain and Portugal, did not come from the Spanish word almacen | almazen = "magazine". This point has been made in Origin and spread of Oriental words in European languages, by Arnald Steiger, year 1963.
Jump up^ "Magazine" in NED (year 1908).
^ Jump up to:^a ^b Ibn Sina's encyclopedia is online in Arabic. It has an entry for مارقشيتا mārqashītā. It was noted by Martin Levey, year 1962, footnote 174 that part of what Ibn Sina says about mārqashītā closely echoes what's said about marqashīthā in the so-called "Aristotle's lapidary" (also called "The Stone Book of Aristotle"), a work about minerals dated 9th century in Arabic, and well-known to Arabic alchemists. The "Aristotle's lapidary", which is downloadable in Arabic at Julius.Ruska.de, has overall many clear influences from Syriac. Modern dictionaries of the historical Syriac language, citing early medieval Syriac sources, have marq(a)shita (alsomaqashitha) meaning iron sulfides, marcasite and pyrite – ref , ref , ref , ref. The Arabic word marqashita does not look native in Arabic. It may have entered Arabic through Syriac. Many of the stone names in the so-called "lapidary of Aristotle" are considered to be of Iranian origin and that can be true of marqashita too –Mineralogy & Crystallography: On the History of these Sciences through 1919 (pages 30–31).
^ Jump up to:^a ^b Dictionnaire Étymologique Des Mots Français D'Origine Orientale, by L. Marcel Devic, year 1876.
Jump up^ The 11th century Book of Precious Stones by Al-Biruni is online in Arabic at Alwaraq.net and مكتبة-المصطفى.com. An English translation of the book is atFarlang.com, translated by Hakim Mohammad Said, year 1989.
Jump up^ Colcothar, Tutty, and Zarnich are three obsolete English names originating in medieval Arabic alchemy. They have been replaced by the modern names iron oxide, zinc oxide, and arsenic sulfide, respectively. Marcasite meaning iron sulfide has survived in modern science because the word was redefined in the mid-19th century to designate a certain narrow type of iron sulfide. The older, broader meaning of marcasite goes back to late medieval times in English (examples). Today the most common type of iron sulfide is usually called by the name pyrite. But jewelry made from pyrite is still called "marcasite jewelry", a term that got established in English in the 18th century.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b Different dictionaries report different origins for "massicot", yet they report the word to be from medieval Arabic one way or another. The origin reported here is the one in massicot @ CNRTL.fr (also massicot @ Random House and marzacotto @ TLIO.ovi.cnr.it). In support for this etymology, Du Cange's Glossary of Medieval Latin has a quote from a book by Matthaeus Silvaticus dated 1317 that describes "massacuma" as a ceramics glaze having lead as the foremost ingredientref, ref. Elsewhere in the same book Matthaeus Silvaticus spells it massacumia and masacumia, and says massacumia is called also in Latin massacocto, where"cocto" is Latin for "baked" – ref. In Simon of Genoa's Latin dictionary dated 1292, massacumia is described as a glaze (without any mention of lead) and declared to be also known as masacocto or massaroto (where "roto" is Latin for "rotary") – ref, ref. Matthaeus Silvaticus and Simon of Genoa lived in Italy. Assuming the etymology is correct, modifying the Latin massacumia to the Latin massacocto (Italian mazzacotto, year 1303, Italian cotto = "baked") is a case of a multi-syllabic foreign word getting modified through a 'striving after meaning', as seen as well in the Arabic loanwords Admiral, Algorithm, Mohair, Popinjay, and Safflower, and probably Typhoon. Massacunye with an 'n', and also spelled massacune, is on record in the English language in the early 15th century described as "vitrinynge" (vitrifying material) for glazing earthenware – Middle English Dictionary. The modern English name massicot came from the French massicot which came from the Italian mazzacotto (1303), Italian maççacocti (1312), Italian marzacotto (1355). The Italian word in the 14th century was a glaze for earthenware, not necessarily lead-based – TLIO (in Italian). In Arabic Ibn al-Baitar (died 1248) quotes Al-Razi (died circa 930) saying مسحقونيا masḥaqūniyā is a glaze for earthenware jars – Ibn al-Baitar'sBook of Simple Medicaments. The Arabic writer Al-Biruni (died 1048) wrote, in a context where he had been talking about molten glass: "The dross or scum (رغوة) of glass is called مسحوقونيا masḥūqūniyā. This dross is flat, white and brittle.... It is also called "froth of glassmaking".... Suhar Bakht says that it is the coating for the Egyptian earthenware." – Al-Biruni's Book of Stones, section on glass in Arabic (page 131) and in English translation. Richardson's Arabic Dictionary, year 1852, translated Arabic مسحوقونيا masḥūqūniyā as English "dross of glass" – ref. The first piece of the word could come from the Arabic and Semitic root مسح masaḥ, to wipe, to polish. (Arabic masaḥ can also mean to cover a surface with a coating or veneer – masah @ Almaany.com). The quniya part has no native root in Arabic. Thequniya part looks to be from Greek konia = "stucco; dust or powder used for plastering", arriving in Arabic through the intermediation of Syriac qūnīā meaning more or less the same as the Greek. The combined word looks to be a Syriac construction originally, as noted by Federico Corriente, 2008, 1985.
Jump up^ In standard Arabic today matrah means "location"; it does not mean mattress or rug or suchlike. But in medieval Arabic there is lots of evidence that it had a meaning of a rug or padded fabric for lying on. A handful of medieval Arabic examples are given in Dozy, year 1869, page 151 and one additional example is Arabic matrah = Latin tapet (English rug) in a late-13th-century dictionary. The plural was matārih – Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon page 1838. A reason for confidence that the medieval Western mattress word came from Arabic is that the word was sometimes spelled with al- prefixed in the West. A handful of examples of that are given in Dozy's book and one additional example is the year 1291 Latin almatracium @ DuCange. Dozy states that the strongly aspirated 'h' in Arabic matrah was replaced by the 'ss' in Italian materasso, the 'c' in Latin materacium. Dozy also states that Italian materasso and Spanish & Portuguese almadraque, with the same meaning, appear to be separate, independent borrowings of the Arabic word. The mattress word in the late medieval West usually meant a somewhat padded underblanket, not a stuffed mattress, not a "featherbed" – examples in MED (in English) and DMF (in French). In the early records in the West in some cases the padding material was combed or carded cotton fluff, which in those days was an import from Arabic lands and was a preferred material for padding fabrics. Example: year 1232 Latinmateracum bombesi where bombesi = "cotton fluff". The Arabs slept on padded blankets which were rolled up and put away during the day, and spread out on the floor at bedtime; "they did not have beds properly speaking in the fashion of us French" – Devic year 1876; "everyone passing through the Middle East can understand how a word for a throw can lead to a word for a bed" – Lammens year 1890.
Jump up^ House Owners and House Property in Seventeenth-Century Ankara and Kayseri, by Suraiya Faroqhi, year 1987, page 25. Histoire du commerce du Levant au moyen-âge, by W. Heyd, year 1886, Volume 2, pages 703-705. "Rediscovering Camlet: Traditional mohair cloth weaving in Southeastern Turkey", by Charlotte Jirousek, in Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings year 2008, pages 1-3.
Jump up^ "Mohair" in NED (year 1908).
Jump up^ In India, from October to April the winds blow from the northeast, while from April to October they blow approximately from the southwest (with heavy rains arriving in June); see monsoon of India. The first governor of Portuguese India, Afonso de Albuquerque (died 1515), often mentions the monsoon winds in his letters. He usually spells it mouçam. E.g. in a letter on 8 November 1514 he writes of trade goods which were "am de partyr nesta mouçam d abryll" = "to depart at this April's monsoon" –ref. The Portuguese ç is pronounced s. Mouçam is phonetically close to the Arabic mawsim. Diogo do Couto lived in Portuguese India in the 1560s, and consistently spelled it moução (ref: Yule & Burnell), which is close to the Arabic form as well -- the letter ã of Portuguese is 'a' with nasalization and is etymologically an 'an'. Portuguese usually replaces 'an' with ã. From the Portuguese word, an Italian traveler in India in the 1560s, Cesare Federici, writing in Italian, spelled it moson (ref: Yule & Burnell). But in Portuguese India during the 16th century the dominant wordform became monção, from causes not understood. English sailors in the late 16th century in India adopted it with spelling monson, from monção. In year 1442, Persian historian and ambassador Abd al-Razzaq Samarqandi sailed to India from the Persian Gulf, starting at the port of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf. He sailed back home again in 1444. He wrote in Persian a 45-page narrative of his trip. The following is a quote from a published English translation, plus three of his Persian words have been put in brackets together with alternative translation: "The favorable time for departing by sea [to India from the Persian Gulf]... is the beginning or middle of the monsoon [= موسم mawsim = sailing season]... The end of the monsoon [= آخر موسمākher mawsim = last part of the sailing season] is the season [= زمان zamān = time] when tempests [= طوفان tūfān = violent sea-storm] and attacks from pirates are to be dreaded.... The time for navigation having passed, every one who would put to sea at this season was alone responsible for his death, since he voluntarily placed himself in peril." – ref: Abd al-Razzaq Samarqandi in Persian (on page 344) and in English translation. An admiral in the Turkish navy, Seydi Ali Reis, traveled with Arabs on the Indian Ocean in the mid 1550s. He started out from the Iraqi port of Basra. Writing in Turkish in 1556, he says that when he was in Basra he had to wait for almost half a year for the arrival of what he called the mowsim = "sailing season" – ref, alt link. A century later, French traveller Jean de Thévenot set sail to India from Basra. Thévenot had lived in the Middle East for about five years previously and could speak Arabic. He wrote: "I set out from Balsora [i.e. Basra] on the sixth of November 1665.... The proper season for sailing on the Indian Sea is called mousson or monson by corruption from [Arabic] moussem. The season wherein there is a constant Trade Wind upon that Sea begins commonly at the end of October and lasts to the end of April." – ref: in French, in English translation. Arabic mawsim is from Arabic root wasem = "to mark" and Arabic grammar prefix m-. It is not hard to find mawsim in medieval Arabic in the sense of "season, time of year". E.g. botanistIbn al-Baitar (died 1248) has المطر الموسمي al-matar al-mawsemī = "seasonal rain" (in a climate having rainy and rainless seasons) and he also has الموسم بمكة al-mawsem be-meka = "pilgrimage season" – ref. More historical details in Yule & Burnett, NED, Dozy, CNRTL.fr.
Jump up^ The typhoon storm was written tufão in 1540 in Portuguese, touffon in 1588 in English, and tuffon in 1610 in English – all very close to the Arabic tūfān. The Koran uses this word for The Deluge in Sura29:Verse14 and the medieval Arabic dictionaries define tūfān also as "overwhelming rain" (www.Baheth.info). The English word-form was later affected by the ancient Greek mythological demon Typhon – see typhon @ CNRTL.fr. It was perhaps also affected by a Chinese word tai feng. "Sometimes [typhoon is] claimed as a Chinese word meaning 'a great wind' [tai feng]... but this seems to be a late mystification." – Yule & Burnell. Other early records for the typhoon word in English include the following: tufan (1614), tuffon (1615), tufon (1625), tuffon (1626), tuffon (1665), tuffin (1674), tuffoon (1699), tuffoon (1721), tuffoon (1727), tuffoon (1745), tay-fun (1771), tiffoon (1773), tuffoon (1780), typhawn (1793), tuffoon (1802), ty-foong (1806), touffan (1811), typhoon (1819), toofan (1826), toofaun (1826), tiffoon (1831), typhoon (1832), typhoon (1840), tyfoon (1848), tufan (1850), typhoon (1851) – ref: NED; also Yule & Burnell. The first known record of the word-form "typhoon" in English is in 1819 in the classically educated poet Percy Bysshe Shelley who never went to the Indies or China. Turkish navy admiral Sidi Ali Reis (died 1563) travelled on Arab ships on the Indian Ocean in the 1550s and wrote in Turkish: "We left the port of Guador [in today's Pakistan] and again steered for Yemen. We had been at sea for several days... when suddenly from the west arose a great storm known as fil tofani [where fil = "elephant" in Arabic and Turkish].... As compared to these awful tempests, the foul weather in the Mediterranean and Black Sea is mere child's play and their towering billows are as drops of water compared to those of the Indian Sea." – ref.
Jump up^ "Mummy" in an English medical book in 1475: "Make a plastir of bole and sandragon and mummie and sumac and of gum arabike" – MED. Another, this dated 1425, spelling modernised: "Another emplaister [plaster dressing] to the same, Take mummie, glue..bole armoniak, aloes, and half an ounce mastik" – MED. The "mummie" was bitumen. More details in Studies in Early Petroleum History by R.J. Forbes, year 1958, Chapter XII: "Ex Oriente Bitumen", including the statement ofIbn Al-Baitar on page 165. Likewise reported by the French etymology dictionary momie @ CNRTL.fr. The Arabic mūmiyā (also mūmiyāyi) = "bitumen" is written in Latin as mumia in Gerard of Cremona's 12th century translation of Ibn Sina's Canon of Medicine (ref). It is widely accepted that the Arabic mūmiyā | mūmiyāyi = "bitumen" and Arabic mūm = "wax" were derived from Persian mūm = "wax".
Jump up^ The post-medieval evolution of Mummy's meaning in English is documented in NED.
Jump up^ Muslin meaning fine lightweight cotton fabric made in Mosul has it earliest record in the West in the Italian Andrea Alpago a.k.a. Andreae Alpagi Bellunensis (died 1522), who lived in Damascus for decades as an attaché of the Venetian consulate. He spelled the fabric name as mussoli in Latin – he is quoted in Yule & Burnell (1903). Another early record is in the German traveller Leonhard Rauwolf, who travelled round the Levant in 1573–1575 and published a 350-page narrative of his visit, which is online in the German 1582 edition (page 93) and English translation 1693 (page 62)DjVu. When talking about muslin in Aleppo, Rauwolf says the stuff is brought to Aleppo from Mosul, it is made from cotton, and the Arabs call it "Mossellini". But Mossellini looks like it's the Italian merchants' wordform, because the Arabic wordform was mūsilī with no 'n' (Dozy 1869, Lammens 1890, CNRTL.fr), and -ini in Italian is a diminutive. Italian speakers dominated the commerce between Aleppo and the West at that time. William Biddulph, an English traveller in Aleppo writing in 1609, says "muslina" is a type of cloth brought to Aleppo from Mosul, but he says it is made from linen – NED. The word "sash" entered English from Arabic shāsh at about the same time as muslin. The Arabic shāsh was a long ribbon of lightweight muslin used to make a turban. It could be of cotton or linen. A large part of the market for muslin in the Middle East in those days was for shāsh turbans, which were many, many meters long. The Thousand and One Nights tales has Arabic وإلى رأسه شاش موصلي = "and on his head a shāsh mūsilī ". In John Florio's Italian dictionary in 1611 mussolo was defined as "a kind of head-attire or turbant that the Persians wear" – ref. Later in the 17th century and still today in Italian mussola = "muslin".
Jump up^ "Lilac" in Rariorum aliquot stirpium per Hispanias observatarum Historia, by Carolus Clusius, year 1576, in Latin. In an updated edition in 1601, Carolus Clusius said the lilac tree was brought from Istanbul specifically – Rariorum Plantarum Historia, by Carolus Clusius, year 1601, in Latin. The common lilac was first brought to Western Europe in 1563 by a Western ambassador stationed in Istanbul, Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, who gave live specimens of the tree to the professional botanistsClusius and Matthiolus. Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq is also credited with bringing to Western Europe, for either the first or near first time, tulip flower bulbs and horse chestnut trees, which he got in Istanbul along with the lilacs. Refs: Lilacs: the genus Syringa, by John L. Fiala, year 2002, page 16; Encyclopaedia Romana, article on Carolus Clusius; also "Garden history" in the Common Lilac article.
Jump up^ "Lilac" and "lillach" in The Herball, or General Historie of Plantes, by John Gerard, year 1597, page 1214-1215 (and a drawing of the lilac is on the righthand side of page 1213). In a list published the previous year (1596) John Gerrard called it "Lylac Mathioli" – ref: A Catalogue of Plants Cultivated in the Garden of John Gerard in the Years 1596–1599, Edited with Notes, by Benjamin Daydon Jackson, year 1876, pages 10 and 41.
Jump up^ The common lilac tree is popular in gardens in Russia and Canada. It will not bloom under cultivation in most Arabic-speaking locales because the winters are not cold enough; the tree requires a length of cold weather to set the buds for bloom – ref: Lilacs: the genus Syringa, by John L. Fiala, year 2002, pages 5 and 13. The tree is native in upland areas of the Balkans, where it blooms with light-violet blue color, and it has not been demonstrated to be native anywhere else – same ref pages 15 to 18. In world history the earliest records for the tree come from the 16th century in Istanbul, where it was grown as an ornamental, and from where it was brought to northwestern Europe for the same purpose in the later 16th. The Balkans was part of the Turkish Empire at the time. However the western European botanists at the time imagined that the Turks in Istanbul must have gotten the new tree species from somewhere in the Orient. It was not until more than two centuries later (beginning in 1828) that Western botanists discovered and confirmed it was native in the Balkans, and afterwards the earlier misperception was shaken off only gradually – "A visit to the home of the lilac", by Edgar Anderson, year 1935, pages 2 and 4. The tree does not have a known record in Arabic until two centuries after the records begin in English and French; fr:Ellious Bocthor (died 1821), who lived in Paris, seems to be the author of the first known record in Arabic – see e.g. Dozy, year 1869 page 297. In today's Greek language the word for indigo dye is λουλάκι loulaki. In Albanian language the indigo dye is called llullaq (audio pronunciation). In Macedonian language one of the names for the color indigo and violet – but not for light-violet and not for the lilac tree – is Лилјакова līlyakova (audio pronunciation), color-names in Macedonian often having the suffix -ова. The indigo dye was imported from India (the indigo plants are tropical). The dye's name in the southern Balkans looks to be from the Persian līlaj | līlang = "indigo dye", related to Persian nīlak = "blueish" and Arabic nīlaj = "indigo dye", from the Sanskritic nila = "indigo". The lilac tree's name may have been generated in the Balkans from this Balkans color word, with reference to the tree's blue flowers. The tree is called люляк leulyak (lewl-yak) in Bulgarian. The tree is leylak in Turkish, which is the source of the Western European word (Skeat 1888). (In most of the Balkans languages the tree is called "Yorgovan"). Some of today's English dictionaries continue to say erroneously that the word lilac entered the West by transfer from Arabic to Spanish (with no date given). Therefore it is worth mentioning that today's Spanish dictionaries say Spanish lila = "lilac" has been borrowed from the French (e.g. Diccionario RAE), which is to say that Spanish researchers have found no record in Spanish until some time after the records begin in French.
Jump up^ Quoted from Word Origins by John Ayto (year 2005). Likewise reported at CNRTL.fr.
^ 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.
Jump up^ There is a Spanish almacabra = "Islamic graveyard" – Diccionario RAE. Almacabra is rare. Its earliest known record is 1554 (which is after macabra had entered Spanish from the French macabre). Almocavar has records from centuries earlier in medieval Portuguese, beginning in Portuguese Latin in 1137 – Iberoromanische Arabismen, by Y. Kiegel-Keicher, year 2005 page 138.
Jump up^ DRAE, C-OED, CNRTL.fr, M-W.
Jump up^ In Spanish, amasar is the usual word for "to knead" but Spanish also has the lesser-used form masar = "to knead" – ref: DRAE.
Jump up^ An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English (year 1921), by Ernest Weekley.

N[edit]

nadir: نظير naẓīr, a point on a celestial sphere diametrically opposite some other point; or a direction to outer space diametrically opposite some other direction. That sense for the word was used by, e.g., the astronomer Al-Battani (died 929).^[2] Naẓīr in medieval Arabic more broadly meant "counterpart".^[3] "The Arabic 'z' here used is the 17th letter of the Arabic alphabet, an unusual letter with a difficult sound, which came to be rendered by 'd' in Low Latin."^[4] The word's earliest records in the West are in 12th- and 13th-century Latin astronomy texts as nadahir and nadir, with the same meaning as the Arabic, and the earliest is in an Arabic-to-Latin translation.^[2] Crossref zenith, which was transferred from Arabic astronomy to Latin astronomy on the same pathway at the same time. [1]
natron, natrium, kalium: The ancient Greeks had the word nitron with the meaning of naturally-occurring sodium carbonate and similar salts. The medieval Arabs had this spelled نطرون natrūn with the same meaning. Today's European word natron, meaning hydrated sodium carbonate, is descended from the Arabic.^[5] In Europe shortly after sodium was isolated as an element for the first time, in the early 19th century, sodium was given the scientific abbreviation Na from a newly created Latin name, initially natronium then natrium, which goes back etymologically to the medieval and early modern Arabic natrūn.^[5]^[6] Also in the early 19th century, elemental potassium was isolated for the first time and was soon afterwards given the scientific abbreviation K representing a created Latin nameKalium, which was derived from 18th century scientific Latin Kali meaning potassium carbonate, which goes back etymologically to medieval Arabic al-qalī, which for the medieval Arabs was a mixture of potassium carbonate and sodium carbonate.^[7] Crossref alkali on the list. [2]

O[edit]

orange: نارنج nāranj, orange. Arabic descends from Sanskritic nāraṅga = "orange". The orange tree came from India. The Arabs introduced the orange tree to the Mediterranean region in the early 10th century.^[8] The word is in all the Mediterranean Latin languages from the later medieval centuries. Today it is naranjain Spanish. Today it is arancia in Italian, and orange in French, and this wordform with the loss of the leading ‘n’ occurs early as Latin arangia (late 12th century^[9]). [3]

P[edit]

popinjay (parrot): ببغاء babaghā' | babbaghā', parrot. The change from medieval Arabic sound /b/ to medieval Latin and French sound /p/ also occurs in the loanwords Julep, Jumper, Spinach, and Syrup. The French papegai = "parrot" has a late-12th-century start date^[10] and the English dates from a century later. The wordform was affected by the pre-existing (from classical Latin) French gai = Spanish gayo = English "jay (bird)". Parrots were imported to medieval Europe via Arabic speakers.^[11] [4]

R[edit]

realgar: رهج الغار rahj al-ghār, arsenic sulfide.^[12] In medieval times, realgar was used as a rodent poison, as a corrosive, and as a red paint pigment. The ancient Greeks & Romans knew the substance. Other names for it in medieval Arabic writings include "red arsenic" and "rodent poison". Ibn al-Baitar in the early 13th century wrote: "Among the people of the Maghreb it is called rahj al-ghār" (literally: "cavern powder").^[13] The earliest known records in the West are in 13th-century Spanish spelled rejalgar, and 13th-century Italian and Latin spelled realgar.^[10] Early records in English spelled it resalgar.^[14] [5]
ream (quantity of sheets of paper): رزمة rizma, bale, bundle. Paper itself was introduced to the West by the Arabs in and around the 12th and 13th centuries – the adoption in the West went slowly; history of paper. The Arabic word for a bundle spread to most Western languages along with paper itself, with the initial transfer from Arabic to the West in Spain.^[12] Castillian Spanish was resma. Catalan raima, first record 1287,^[10] looks the forerunner of the English word-form. First record in English is 1356.^[15] [6]
rook (chess), roc (mythology): رخّ rukhkh, (1) the rook piece in the game of chess, (2) a mythological bird in the 1001 Arabian Nights tales. The medieval Arabic dictionary Lisan al-Arabsaid the chess-piece name rukhkh came from Persian; crossref check. The bird meaning for Arabic rukhkh may have come from Persian too. But not from the same word. All available evidence supports the view that the two meanings of Arabic rukhkh sprang from two independent and different roots. [7] [8]

S[edit]

sabkha (landform): 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.^[16] [9]
safari: Entered English in the late 19th century from Swahili language safari = "journey" which is from Arabic سفر safar = "journey". [10]
safflower: عصفر ʿusfur, safflower; or a non-standard variant عصفر ʿasfar, safflower. The Arabic "fur" or "far" part mutated in Italian to "fiore | flore" which is Italian for flower. The flower was commercially cultivated for use as a dye in the Mediterranean region in medieval times. In medieval Italian the spellings includedasfiore, asflore, asfrole, astifore, affiore, zaflore, and saffiore. Medieval Catalan had the spelling alazflor and in Portuguese there was açaflor, where Catalan and Portuguese flor = "flower" (and ç is s). Catalan also had alasfor for safflower. In medieval Arabic writings the usual was ʿusfur, but an oral variant ʿasfarwould be unexceptional in Arabic speech and would be a little better fit to the Romance language wordforms.^[17] [11]
saffron: زعفران zaʿfarān, saffron. Zaʿfarān meaning saffron is commonplace from the outset of writings in Arabic.^[3] It was common in medieval Arab cookery.^[18] The ancient Romans used saffron but called it crocus. The earliest known for a Latin safranum = "saffron" is year 1156 (location in Genoa in Italy, in a commercial contract).^[19] The word saffron became predominant in all the Western languages in the late medieval centuries, in word-forms that led to today's French safran, Italian zafferano, Spanish azafrán. [12]
saphena (saphenous vein): صافن sāfin, saphenous vein (saphena vein). The saphena vein is in the human leg. It was one of the veins used in medieval medical bloodletting (phlebotomy), which was the main context of use of the word medievally. Medical writers who used the word in Arabic include Al-Razi (died c. 930), Haly Abbas (died c. 990), Albucasis (died c. 1013) and Avicenna (died 1037).^[20] In Latin the earliest known record is in an Arabic-to-Latin translation byConstantinus Africanus (died c. 1087) translating Haly Abbas.^[21] Bloodletting, which was practiced in ancient Greek and Latin medicine, was revamped in later-medieval Latin medicine under influence from Arabic medicine. [13]
sash (ribbon): شاش shāsh, a ribbon of fine textile wrapped to form a turban, and usually made of muslin.^[22] Crossref muslin which entered English at about the same time. Among the earliest records in English is this comment from an English traveller in the Middle East in 1615: "All of them wear on their heads white shashes.... Shashes are long towels of Calico wound about their heads."^[23] In English around 1700 a "shash" (also a "sash") was a large ribbon of fine textile wrapped around the waist.^[24] In Arabic today shāsh means gauze or muslin. [14]
scarlet: Wordforms سجلّاط sijillāt and سقلّاط siqillāt have plentiful records in Arabic from the early 9th century onward meaning fine colored cloth in various colors. A variant siqirlāt has no record in Arabic until a date too late, but the equivalent to such a form has a record in Mozarabic language in Spain about year 1000. The Mozarabic word is believed to be the source of the medieval Latin scarlata, first seen about year 1100, meaning fine cloth, expensively dyed bright cloth, in various colors, red most common.^[25] The red dye was usually kermes a.k.a. crimson, but today's scarlet is a brighter red than the kermes red was. [15]
sequin (clothing ornament): سكّة sikka, minting die for coins, and also meaning the place where coins were minted, and also meaning coinage in general. In its early use in English and French, sequin was the name of Venetian and Turkish gold coins. Production of the Venetian sequin (coin) ended in 1797. "The word might well have followed the coin into oblivion, but in the 19th century it managed to get itself applied to the small round shiny pieces of metal applied to clothing."^[26] [16]
serendipity: This word was created in English in 1754 from "Serendip", an old fairy-tale place, from سرنديب Serendīb, an old Arabic name for the island of Sri Lanka. Fortified in English by its resemblance to the etymologically unrelated "serenity". The tale with the serendipitous happenings was The Three Princes of Serendip.^[27] [17]
sheikh: شيخ shaīkh, sheikh. It has been in English since the 17th century meaning an Arab sheikh. In the 20th century it took on a slangy additional meaning of "strong, romantic man". This is attributed to a hit movie, The Sheik (film), 1921, starring Rudolph Valentino, and after the movie was a hit the book it was based on became a hit, and spawned imitators. [18]
sofa: صفّة soffa, a low platform or dais. The Arabic was adopted into Turkish, and from Turkish it entered Western languages in the 16th century meaning a Middle-Eastern-style dais with rugs and cushions. The Western-style meaning —a sofa with legs— started in late-17th-century French.^[28] [19]
spinach: إِسبناخ isbinākh in Andalusian Arabic, and إِسفاناخ isfānākh in medieval Arabic more generally, from Persian aspanākh, spinach.^[10] "The spinach plant was unknown to the ancient Greeks and Romans. It was the Arabs who introduced the spinach into Spain, whence it spread to the rest of Europe,"^[29] and the same is true of the name as well.^[30] The first records in English are around year 1400.^[14] [20]
sugar, sucrose, sucrase: سكّر sukkar, sugar. The word is ultimately from Sanskritic sharkara = "sugar". Cane sugar developed in ancient India originally. It was produced by the medieval Arabs on a pretty extensive scale although it always remained expensive throughout the medieval era. History of sugar. Among the earliest records in England are these entries in the account books of an Anglo-Norman abbey in Durham: year 1302 "Zuker Marok", 1309 "succre marrokes", 1310 "Couker de Marrok", 1316 "Zucar de Cypr[us]".^[31] In other Western languages the word is found roughly a century earlier than in English. The Latin form sucrum | succarum^[32] or the French form sucre = "sugar" produced the modern chemistry terms sucrose and sucrase. [21]
sultan, sultana: سلطان sultān, authority, ruler. The first ruler to use Sultan as a formal title was an Islamic Turkic-speaking ruler in Central Asia in the 11th century. He borrowed the word from Arabic.^[33] In Arabic grammar سلطانة sultāna is the feminine of sultān. Caliph, emir, qadi, and vizier are other Arabic-origin words connected with rulers. Their use in English is mostly confined to discussions of Middle Eastern history. [22]
sumac: سمّاق summāq, sumac species of shrub or its fruit (Rhus coriaria). Anciently and medievally, different components of the sumac were used in leather making, in dyeing, and in herbal medicine. The Arabic geography writer Al-Muqaddasi (died circa 1000) mentions summāq as one of the commercial crops of Syria.^[34] Sumac was called rhus in Latin in the classical and early medieval periods. In the late medieval period sumac became the predominant name in Latin. The Arabic name is found in Latin starting in the 10th century^[10] and as such it is one of the earliest loanwords on this list.^[35] From the Latin, the word is in late medieval English medical books spelled sumac.^[14] [23]
Swahili: سواحل sawāhil, coasts (plural of sāhil, coast). Historically Swahili was the language used in commerce along the east coast of Africa, along 2000 kilometers of coast. Swahili is grammatically a Bantu language, with about one-third of its vocabulary taken from Arabic.^[36] [24]
syrup, sherbet, sorbet: شراب sharāb, a word with two senses in Arabic, "a drink" and "syrup". Medieval Arabic medical writers used it to mean a medicinal syrup, and this was passed into Latin in the late 11th century as siropus | siruppus | syrupus with the same meaning. Constantinus Africanus (died c. 1087), who was fluent in Arabic, is the author of the earliest known records in Latin.^[37] The change from sound /sh/ to sound /s/ in going from sharāb to siroppus reflects the fact that Latin phonology did not use an /sh/ sound ever. The -us of siroppus is a carrier of Latin grammar and nothing more. In the late medieval West, a syrup was usually medicinal.^[37] [25]. Separately from syrup, in the 16th century the same Arabic rootword re-entered the West from Turkish. Turkish sherbet | shurbet = "a sweet lemonade" entered with that meaning into Italian and French as "sorbet" [26] and directly into English as "sherbet" [27].

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

racquet or racket (tennis): Racquet with today's meaning has a late medieval start date. There are unanswered questions about its origin. The French fr:Raquette, Italian it:Racchetta, and the synonymous English racquet are usually taken as derived from medieval Latin rascete which meant the carpal bones of the wrist and the tarsal bones of the feet. The earliest records of this Latin anatomy word are in two 11th-century Latin medical texts, one of which was by the Arabic-speakingConstantinus Africanus who drew from Arabic medical sources. Today's etymology dictionaries suppose the Latin to be from Arabic and the most popular judgement derives it from راحة rāha(t) = "palm of the hand". A less popular judgement derives it from رسغ rusgh = "carpal bones and tarsal bones". Another less popular judgement is that the word racquet is of obscure origin and did not come from any Latin anatomy word.^[38] [28]

soda, sodium: Soda first appears in Western languages in late medieval Latin and Italian meaning the seaside plant Salsola soda and similar saltwort plants used to makesoda ash for use in glassmaking, and simultaneously meaning soda ash itself. In medieval Catalan the name was sosa. Although of uncertain origin, an Arabic origin one way or another is considered likely by many reporters. It is most often said to be from Arabic سواد suwwād or سويدة suwayda, one or more species of saltworts whose ashes yielded soda ash, especially the species Suaeda vera. But that etymon suffers from a want of documentary evidence at a sufficiently early date. Also the Catalan form sosa is historically prior to the Italian form soda.^[39] The name "sodium" was derived from soda in early 19th century. [29]

Footnotes[edit]

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.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b In the mid-12th century, Plato Tiburtinus did an Arabic-to-Latin translation of an astronomy book by Al-Battani (died 929). In the translation, Al-Battani's Arabicnaẓīr and naẓīra was written down in Latin as nadahir. This was remarked on in a history of astronomy by Jean Delambre in 1819 – ref. The 10th century text by Al-Battani is in Arabic at AlChamel14.org (also at Archive.org and Al-Hakawati.net), and its 12th century translation by Plato Tiburtinus is at Books.Google.com. The earliest reported secure record for the wordform nadir in the West is dated circa 1233 in the short and influential astronomy textbook De Sphaera Mundi by Johannes de Sacrobosco. Sacrobosco was influenced by Arabic astronomy; e.g. he quotes by name the Arabic astronomer Al-Farghani (aka Alfraganus) five times. In the context of talking about how planet Earth blocks sunlight from reaching the moon during a lunar eclipse, Sacrobosco says in Latin: "The nadir is a point in outer space directly opposite to the sun." That statement by Sacrobosco uses nadir in the sense the Arabic naẓīr was used, which in Arabic had a core meaning of "counterpart". Sacrobosco's De Sphaera is online in Latin and in English translation. Nicholas Oresme (died 1382) is another notable medieval astronomer who used nadir in its original sense in Latin (ref).
^ Jump up to:^a ^b 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.
Jump up^ Reported in An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, by Walter W. Skeat, year 1888. Downloadable.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b English dictionaries saying "natron" is from Arabic include Merriam-Webster, American Heritage Dictionary, Random House Dictionary, Etymonline,Concise OED, NED, and Weekley. According to all those English dictionaries, the transfer from Arabic to the Western languages was through Spanish, at an unspecified date. But all the major Spanish dictionaries say Spanish natron is from French. That includes the official dictionary of the Spanish language, Diccionario RAE. The earliest known record of natron in Spanish is year 1817, says the major Spanish etymology dictionary Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico (year 1983). The Spanish natron, and also the variant anatron, "are modern technical terms borrowed from French", says the Spanish and Arabic expertFederico Corriente (year 2008). The earliest French is 1653 – CNRTL.fr. The earliest English is 1684 – NED. "Natron" and the closely associated "anatron" were established together in English dictionaries from 1706. Nathan Bailey's English Dictionary in 1737 defined natron as "a kind of black, greyish salt taken out of a lake of stagnant water in the territory of Terrana in Egypt" – ref; and defined "anatron" as any of several salts including one taken from Egypt – ref. The substance natronwas brought to Europe from Egypt in the medieval centuries as well as in the early modern centuries. The usual word for it in medieval Latin was nitrum (etymologically from ancient Greek without Arabic intermediation). It was called nitrum in late medieval English as well – MED. One late medieval Latin dictionary defined nitrum as "a kind of salt brought from Alexandria", Egypt – ref: Alphita. In the medieval Latin literature more generally nitrum could also be a name for other alkaline salts – ref. In Arabic, a 9th-century Arabic minerals book said natrūn is a type of salt used as a washing agent – ref. That is natron. An 11th-century Arabic medical encyclopedia defined natrūn likewise – ref, ref. The wordform "natron" occurs in Latin in Italy in a book by Simon of Genoa in late 13th century, in which "natron"was stated to be simply "the Arabic word for nitrum" – ref: Raja Tazi, year 1998. The wordform "anatron" (formed from al-natrūn) occurs in Latin around year 1300 in a book by the influential Latin alchemist Pseudo-Geber – ref: Pseudo-Geber as published 1542. Both of those two medieval Latin writers had some knowledge of Arabic language. Natron and anatron were rare in medieval Latin. However, in the 16th century, anatron | anathron was adopted in Latin in Germany in the widely disseminated writings of Paracelsus (died 1541) – Paracelsus was influenced by Pseudo-Geber – and then by Paracelsus's followers Oswald Croll (died 1609) and Martin Ruland(died 1602) – ref: Raja Tazi, year 1998. Martin Ruland also used the spelling natron and said natron was synonymous with nitrum – ref: Martin Ruland, year 1612. Despite those precedents in Latin, today's official dictionary of the French language judges that the French natron arrived in French directly from Arabic natrūn, from Egypt, in the mid-17th century – CNRTL.fr. In the early 17th century the name nitrum had undesirable ambiguity. Several incompatible meanings for nitrum are given in Martin Ruland's 1612 Lexicon Alchemiae. The primary meaning for nitrum was becoming nitre (the parent of "nitrogen"). Undoubtedly this encouraged adoption of name natron to reduce the potential for misunderstanding.
Jump up^ "Natrium" at Elementymology & Elements Multidict.
Jump up^ "Kalium" at Elementymology & Elements Multidict.
Jump up^ Origin of Cultivated Plants by Alphonse de Candolle (year 1885), pages 178–181 for lemon and lime, pages 183–188 for orange, page 188 for mandarin orange. Further details in "Études sur les noms arabes des végétaux: l'oranger et ses congénères", by J.J. Clément-Mullet in Journal Asiatique sixième série Tome XV, pages 17 to 41, year 1870. Al-Masudi writing in the 940s (AD) said that the orange tree (shajar al-nāranj) had been introduced to Arabic-speaking lands only a few decades previously (ref). He does not mention the lemon, and from other evidence it seems the lemon had not yet arrived in Al-Masudi's time.
Jump up^ George Gallesio's history of the culture of citrus fruits (year 1811) (online) cites arangias acetoso used in Latin in a letter entitled Ad Petrum Panormitanae Ecclesiae Thesaurarium dated 1189 and attributed to a Latin author of the later 12th century named Hugo Falcandus. The same is cited in Du Cange's Glossary of Medieval Latin.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b ^c ^d ^e 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.
Jump up^ Parrots come from tropical or at least semi-tropical environs. Parrots were imported to Mediterranean Europe in antiquity. The ancient Greek and classical Latin name for a parrot was psittacus. In the medieval era, the imports of parrots to Europe often and probably usually came through Arabic speakers. The medieval Arabic dictionaries have babaghā | babbaghā = "parrot" and this is taken to be the parent word of the medieval Greek papagás = "parrot" (the 's' in papagás is a grammatical affix: masculine singular nominative-case nouns end in 's' in Greek grammar), and the medieval French papegai, medieval Spanish papagayo, and a similar form in a number of other medieval European languages – popinjay @ NED. In Arabic it is not known how the word babaghā originated. The same word babaghā is in Persian. An origin in a tropical locale has been suggested.
^ 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.
Jump up^ Arabic alchemists used the substance realgar but not the name realgar. Generally in medieval Arabic writings the name was al-zarnīkh al-āhmar | al-zirnīq al-āhmar = "red arsenic". The name realgar has its ancestry in mostly oral, non-literary, medieval Maghrebi usage, as demonstrated in Dozy, year 1869. A comment on what Dozy says is in Lammens, year 1890.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b ^c Documented in the Middle English Dictionary (the "MED").
Jump up^ Rem | Reme in the MED.
Jump up^ An Intro to Sabkhas. Also A Proposed Formal Definition for Sabkha.
Jump up^ The safflower is an annual plant that is native to a truly arid climate that has an annual rainy season. The plant has poor defenses against many types of fungal diseases in damp and rainy weather. This greatly restricts the areas in which it can be grown reliably; ref. Alphonse de Candolle in his Origin of Cultivated Plants(year 1885) reports that the ancient Greeks and Romans have not left any clear written evidence that they were acquainted with the safflower plant, particularly not for its use as a dye, even though the evidence is excellent that the ancient Egyptians used safflower as a dye – ref (Carthamus tinctorius). Medieval Arabic dictionaries at Baheth.info say عصفر ʿusfur, meaning safflower, is the plant that produces a well-known dye and also names the dye itself. A summary of the Italian evidence for the Arabic origin of the word "safflower" in late medieval Italian is in Yule & Burnell (year 1903). Much of Yule & Burnell's evidence comes from Pegolotti's Mercatura, year 1340. Italian variant spelling zaflore year 1310 is in TLIO. The medieval and modern Spanish alazor = "safflower" descends from the Arabic ʿusfur with al-prepended. The Catalan alazflor = "safflower" was used in 1383 by Francesc Eiximenis (died 1409) and the Catalan alasfor = "bastard saffron", meaning "safflower", was used in 1404 in an ordinance of king Martin I of Aragon (died 1410) – these records are cited in Vocabulario del comercio medieval: Colección de aranceles aduaneros de la Corona de Aragón (siglo XIII y XIV), by Miguel Gual Camarena, year 1968. (Francesc Eiximenis's usage was in his 1383 book Regiment de la cosa publica which is online). The Catalan alasfor = "safflower", although not often used nowadays, is still listed in modern Catalan dictionaries – ref, ref, ref, ref. In Portuguese, an old and near-obsolete form is açaflor = "safflower". This Portuguese form might be an evolution from the Catalan and/or Italian forms, or might "imply an evolution from a non-attested Portuguese alaçfor" – Dictionary of Arabic and Allied Loanwords: Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, Galician and Kindred Dialects, by F. Corriente, year 2008. Other forms in Portuguese include alaçor = "safflower" and açafroa = "safflower". In the 13th century in Occitan Romance language in southern France there is safra = "safflower" and safran = "safflower" – Medical Synonym Lists from Medieval Provence. This Occitan form is understood as altered from Arabicʿusfur | ʿasfar = "safflower" with the alteration very clearly showing influence from Occitan safran = "saffron"; it is not understood as a simple direct re-purposing ofsafran = "saffron". By the way, according to Alphonse de Candolle and others, the ancient Greek cnikos and classical Latin cnicus is to be interpreted as a thistle-type plant different from the safflower, either always or usually.
Jump up^ Book Medieval Arab Cookery: Essays and Translations, by M. Rodinson, A.J. Arberry and C. Perry, year 2001, 527 pages.
Jump up^ Safran @ CNRTL.fr and zafarana @ Arabismi Medievali di Sicilia by Girolamo Caracausi, both of which are citing Gli arabismi nelle lingue neolatine: Con speciale riguardo all'Italia, by Giovan Battista Pellegrini, year 1972, volume I, who quotes from the medieval document The Cartulary of Giovanni Scriba during the years 1154-1164.
Jump up^ A Treatise on Small-Pox and Measles by Abu Becr Mohammed Ibn Zacariya Ar-Razi, Translated from the Original Arabic by William Alexander Greenhill, year 1848,translator's note on page 154 gives citations for al-sāfin = "saphenous vein" in Haly Abbas, Albucasis and Avicenna, and on page 45 has Al-Razi's usage. Albucasis's description of how to take blood from the saphenous vein is in Arabic together with English translation in the book Albucasis on Surgery and Instruments, year 1973 page 652-653. Avicenna's Canon of Medicine uses the word al-sāfin on 32 different pages in the context of bloodletting treatments – Search results for الصافن at AlWaraq.net. In addition to medical books, some medieval Arabic general-purpose dictionaries have al-sāfin = "saphenous vein". One of these is the Fiqh al-Lugha ofAl-Tha'alibi (died 1038) – ref. Another is the Lisan al-Arab dictionary – صافن @ Baheth.info.
Jump up^ The saphena vein is in Constantinus Africanus spelled sophena. It receives a paragraph of discussion in an article about Constantinus's terminology by Gotthard Strohmaier, year 1994 page 98. Another early record in Latin is as saphena circa 1170 in Gerard of Cremona's translation of Avicenna (ref: in Latin) and this is noted in a book about the history of anatomy terminology by Singer and Rabin, year 1946. In the Latin surgery book of Lanfranc of Milan (died 1306) the word is spelled both sophena and saphena – Ref. Some more etymology references are at saphène @ CNRTL.fr.
Jump up^ Dictionnaire détaillé des noms des vêtements chez les Arabes by Reinhard Dozy, year 1845. Has several pages of detail on the old meaning of the Arabic wordshāsh.
Jump up^ The quote is from "A relation of a journey begun in 1610... containing a description of the Turkish Empire, of Egypt, of the Holy Land, of the remote parts of Italy, and islands adjoining", by George Sandys, first published in 1615: online. In the Middle East around that time, it was the custom for men to wear a turban that consisted of about seven meters of fine lightweight muslin cloth wound around the head. Another traveller's description was given by Fynes Moryson in 1617: Fynes Moryson'sItinerary, 1617. More quotations of early use of "s[h]ash" in English are in NED (year 1914). An Italian-to-English dictionary dated 1611 written by John Florio has Italian sessa and Italian mussolo with approximately the same meaning as Arabic shāsh. Sessa is an Italian representation of the Arabic word shāsh (Italian normally did not use an /sh/ sound, historically, and normally converted the /sh/ sound of foreign words to an /s/ sound in Italian). The word was rendered into French assesse around the same time – ref.
Jump up^ John Kersey's English dictionary of 1708 and Nathan Bailey's English dictionary of 1726 have "shash" = "the linen of which a Turkish turbant is made; also a kind of girdle made of silk, etc. to tie about the waist" (online in Bailey's). Those two dictionaries also have "sash" = "a sort of girdle" [girdle = a band around the waist](online in Bailey's). Samuel Johnson's English dictionary of 1756, which has no "shash", has "sash" = "a belt worn by way of distinction; a silken band worn by officers in the army" (ref). The change in English from earlier "shash" to later "sash" is a case of phonetic dissimilation, says Weekley 1921 and Random House Dictionary 2001.
Jump up^ The etymology of "scarlet" is difficult or problematical. A 12-page article devoted to the question was published in 1913, "Ciclatoun Scarlet" written by George Foot Moore. The article reaches the conclusion that the Western word came from Arabic in Spain. In the years since that article was written, an additional item of evidence has surfaced to support the same conclusion, namely a record in the Mozarabic language in year 1001 (note: Mozarabic is not an Arabic language). Dictionaries that say the word is of Arabic ancestry one way or another: CNRTL.fr, Concise OED, American Heritage Dictionary, Random House Dictionary, Diccionario RAE, A Dictionary of Andalusi Arabic (1997), Raja Tazi (1998), Partridge (1966), Weekley (1921). Some other dictionaries say the Western word came from Persian (Merriam-Webster's Dictionary is one). But that idea has the twin weakness that (1) records for the word in Persian do not begin until the early 14th century (in Jami' al-tawarikh), which is after the word had become common in the Romance languages, and (2) the meaning of the Persian word was a cloth imported from the Mediterranean region (see George Foot Moore's article and CNRTL.fr). The word in Arabic had come from Late Classical Latin and Early Medieval Greek – that is detailed by George Foot Moore and it was said in the medieval era in Arabic for سجلّاط and سجلّاطس and سقلّاط and سقلاطون in the medieval dictionaries.
Jump up^ Quote from Word Origins: The Hidden Histories of English Words, by John Ayto (year 2005). Likewise reported at CNRTL.fr.
Jump up^ The Arabic "Sarandib" meaning Sri Lanka also occurs in English in translations of the Sinbad the Sailor tales (which are part of the Thousand Nights and a Nighttales). In a translation of these tales in 1885, the translator Richard F. Burton has a footnote that the Arabic Sarandīb | Serendīb is etymologically from SanskriticSelan-dwipa where Selan is the same thing as the old English name "Ceylon" and dwipa is Sanskritic for "island" – ref (page 64). Further discussed at Names of Sri Lanka. In Sri Lanka in year 1902 a previously unknown type of mineral was discovered and given the name Serendibite from the old Arabic name for Sri Lanka. The mineral Serendibite has since been found in North America and elsewhere, but remains very rare.
Jump up^ "Sofa" in NED (in English), CNRTL.fr (in French), and Lammens (in French). E. W. Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon says the medieval Arabic soffa was "an appurtenance of a house". Soffa had further usages in medieval Arabic; more from E. W. Lane at Ref. However, the use of soffa in Arabic to mean a sofa (found inBocthor's dictionary in early 19th century) was a post-medieval development and perhaps started in Turkish. The following are depictions of Turkish sofas painted in the early 18th century in Turkey: Sofa--1, Sofa--2, Sofa--3, Sofa--4. The year 1680 Turkish-Arabic-Persian-Latin Dictionary of Mesgnien-Meninski defined صفّة soffa in both Turkish and Arabic in the same way as what is depicted in those paintings (and defined it as a porch also) – ref.
Jump up^ The quote is from Lammens year 1890.
Jump up^ A 12th-century Andalusian Arab called Ibn Hisham Al-Lakhmi called spinach isbinākh and another Andalusian Arab source spelled it asbinākh – A Dictionary of Andalusi Arabic (year 1997). That Andalusian Arabic wordform is phonetically very close to the later medieval French forms espinache, espinage, espinoche, espinace, and also the medieval Catalan espinacs, Spanish espinaca, and similar forms – CNRTL.fr, DMF, Godefroy, MED, Diccionari.cat. Spinach is thought to occur natively in Iran; and the cultivation of spinach is thought to have originated in Iran not long before the Islamic conquest of Iran – De Candolle, Origin of Cultivated Plants (1885). In the 14th century, the Arabic dictionary of Fairuzabadi spelled it إِسفاناخ isfānākh and labelled it م = "well-known (definition unnecessary)" – www.Baheth.info. The 11th-century writer Ibn Sina did the same – ref. The form isfānākh is on record in Arabic from the late 9th century, which is nearly three centuries before a record of spinach in a Western language. In the West the first known records of the plant under any name are in Catalan and Provençal in the 12th century (as per CNRTL.fr).
Jump up^ "Sugar" in the Middle English Dictionary. "Marrok" meant Morocco – that is clear from elsewhere in the same dictionary.
Jump up^ Spellings of the word for sugar in late medieval Latin included sucrum, succarum, sucharum, sucarium, succurum, zucrum, zucara, zuchar, zucharum, zuccura, zucurium – Du Cange. Those are Latinizations of oral Romance speech.
Jump up^ Quote: "Sultān in Arabic is an abstract noun, meaning authority and rule, and was used from early times to denote the government.... It first became official in the eleventh century, when the Seljuks adopted it as their chief regnal title." – ref. The Seljuk ruler Tughril Beg proclaimed himself al-Sultān in 1038 – ref.
Jump up^ Extracts from Al-Muqaddasi's late-10th-century Description of Syria in English translation are at Ref. Summāq is in the "Commerce" section. This was noted byHenri Lammens, year 1890, citing the Arabic text of Al-Muqaddasi. Lammens also cites a couple of other medieval Arabic geography writers who used the word.Summāq can be cited from many medieval Arabic medicine writers, as it was commonly used in medicaments.
Jump up^ Amber, Azure and Camphor have 9th-century Latin records; www.CNRTL.fr. Those are the earliest.
Jump up^ Swahili-to-English Dictionary, with etymologies for the Swahili words, compiled by Andras Rajki (2005)^{[dead link]}.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b In Arabic the medical writer Ibn Sina (died 1037) called syrup sharāb and has dozens of different syrups in his Book V, Treatise 6: On potions and thickened juices. The medical writer Najm al-Din Mahmud (died 1330) has another set of dozens of recipes for viscous sharāb for medical purposes, where fruit juices are boiled to reduce water by evaporation, and sugar is added – ref (in Arabic and French). "Sharāb... is very common in [old] Arabic medical writings", says Dozy 1869. In Latin, the word is in the Arabic-to-Latin medical translator Constantinus Africanus (died c. 1087) with the early surviving copies of his work spelling it variously syrop_ | sirop_ | sirup_ – ref , ref. No records pre-dating Constantinus Africanus are known in Latin. In the 12th century in Latin, siropus | sirupus | syropus | syrupus is frequent in the works of the Salernitan school of medicine (ref), whose ways of doing medicine were much influenced by Constantinus Africanus, and it is frequent in the Arabic-to-Latin medical translations of the translator Gerard of Cremona (example). In late medieval western Europe, "syrup" usually meant a medicinal potion (sugar + liquid + medicine). That is well documented for the 15th-century English language in the Middle English Dictionary and is evident in the entry for sirop in theDictionary of late medieval French. Some comments on the use of syrups among the medieval Arabs are in the book Food and Foodways of Medieval Cairenes, year 2011 pages 461-464.
Jump up^ Most of today's English etymology dictionaries report that "racquet" is of Arabic ancestry, but they don't explain how. Some aspects of an origin in Arabic anatomy terminology are at CNRTL.fr. More historical info about the medieval anatomy word meaning the wrist bones is at English Words That Are Of Arabic Etymological Ancestry, Note #185 "Racquet". A minority of English dictionaries judge that there is not enough evidence from late medieval European writings to warrant belief that the word for the wrist bones generated the word for the racquet (e.g. NED, Corriente). Alternative etymologies are discussed at length in German in "Zur Herkunft von französisch raquette", by Christian Schmitt in Romania Arabica, year 1996, pages 47-55.
Jump up^ The etymology of the word "soda" is discussed in depth in German in the article "Soda" by Arnald Steiger in journal Vox Romanica year 1937 pages 53-76 (with main conclusions on pages 73-76). A review in English that takes information from Arnald Steiger's article is English Words That Are Of Arabic Etymological Ancestry, Note #186 "Soda".

T[edit]

tabla (percussion instrument in music of India): طبل tabl, drum. English tabla is from Hindi tabla which is from Arabic tabl, which in Arabic has been the usual word for drum (noun and verb) since the beginning of written records.^[2] [1]
tahini: طحينة tahīna, tahini. Derives from the Arabic verb for "grind" and is related to tahīn = "flour". The written Arabic tahīna is pronounced "taheeny" in Levantine Arabic. The word entered English directly from Levantine Arabic around year 1900. More recently it can be found in English in the word-form tahina. [2]
talc: طلق talq, mica or talc. Common in medieval Arabic. Documented in Latin alchemy from around 1300 onward. Not common in the West until the later 16th century.^[3] [3]
talisman: طلسم tilsam | tilasm, meaning an incantation and later on meaning a talisman. The Arabic was from Greek telesma = "consecration ceremony". An 11th century Arabic astrology book called the Ghāyat al-Hakīm uses the word frequently in the sense of talisman.^[4] [4]
tamarind: تمر هندي tamr hindī (literally: "date of India"), tamarind. Tamarinds were in use in ancient India. They were not known to the ancient Greeks and Romans. They entered medieval Latin medical practice from Arabic. In English the early records are in translations of Latin medical texts. Tamarind's medieval medical uses were various.^[5] [5]
tanbur, tanbura, tambur, tambura, tambouras, tamburica, tembûr: These are all long-necked plucked string musical instruments. From Arabic طنبور ṭunbūr (also ṭanbūr), long-necked plucked string instrument. The word occurs early and often in medieval Arabic. It was also in use in Early Medieval Aramaic.^[6] The English tambourine, a percussive instrument, is without any documentary evidence that would etymologically relate it. Likewise tambour = "drum" is either unrelated to tambur = "string instrument" or else the relation is poorly understood.^[7] [6]
tangerine: طنجة Tanja, port city in Morocco: Tangier ("Tanger" in most European languages). Tangerine oranges or mandarin oranges were not introduced to the Mediterranean region until the early 19th century.^[8] The English word "tangerine" arose in the UK in the early 1840s from shipments of tangerine oranges from Tangier. The word origin was in the UK.^[9] The Arabic name for a tangerine is unrelated. The city existed in pre-Arabic times named "Tingi". [7]
tare (weight): طرحة tarha, a discard (something discarded; from root tarah, to throw). The tare weight is defined in English as the weight of a package that's empty. To get the net weight of goods in a package, you weigh the goods in their package, which is the gross weight, and then discard the tare weight. Catalan tara dates from 1271,^[10] French tare 1311, Italian tara 1332,^[11] England tare 1380.^[12] The word is seen in Spanish around 1400 in the form atara, which helps affirm Arabic ancestry^[13] (the leading 'a' in atara is the vestige of the Arabic definite article^[14]). It is spelled tara in today's Spanish, Italian, German, and Russian.[8]
tariff: تعريف taʿrīf, notification, specification (from ʿarraf, to notify). The word was widely used in medieval Arabic and meant any kind of notification or specification.^[15] In the West in late medieval Mediterranean commerce it meant a statement of inventory on a merchant ship (bill of lading) or any tabular statement of products and prices offered for sale. In use by Italian and Catalan merchants in the 14th century. Entered French and English in the 16th. Spanish tarifa is not on record before the late 17th.^[16] From the meaning of a tabular statement of import tax liabilities on different goods, the meaning of import taxes grew out by metonymy. [9]
tarragon (herb): طرخون tarkhūn, tarragon. The word with that sense was used by Ibn Al-Baitar (died 1248), who gives a description of the plant and mentions both culinary and medical uses.^[17] Tarkhūn comes up in a medical context in Al-Razi (died circa 930), and in a culinary context in Ibn al-Awwam (died circa 1200).^[17] In later-medieval Latin (late 12th century onward) it comes up in a medicine context spelled altarcon, tarchon and tragonia and was acknowledged at the time to be from Arabic. Until then in Latin there is no record of the plant under any name, or at least no clear record. Records for Italian tarcone, French targon, Spanish tarragoncia, English tarragon and German Tragon all start in the 16th century and in a culinary context.^[18] [10]
tazza, demitasse: طاسة tāsa | طسّة tassa, round, shallow, drinking cup or bowl. The word has been in all the western Romance languages since the 13th and 14th centuries.^[11] It was common in Arabic for many centuries before that.^[15] English had it as tass in the 16th century, which continued much later in colloquial use in Scotland, but today's tazza and demitasse came from Italian and French in the 19th century. [11]
tuna: التون al-tūn, tunafish. Ancient Greek and classical Latin thunnus = "tunafish" -> medieval Arabic al-tūn -> medieval Spanish atún -> colloquial American Spanish tuna -> late 19th century California tuna -> international English. Note: Modern Italian tonno, French thon, and English tunny, each meaning tuna, are descended from the classical Latin without an Arabic intermediary. Note: Isidore of Seville (died 636, lived in southern Spain) spelled it thynnus in Latin, where the Latin letter 'y' in Isidore's case was likely pronounced "eu", roughly like in British "tuna", which was roughly how the letter 'y' was pronounced in classical Latin.^[19] [12]. The Albacore species of tunafish got its name from 16th century Spanish & Portuguese albacora, which might be from Arabic, although there is no clear precedent in Arabic.^[20] [13]. In the tuna family the Bonito is another commercial fish species whose name comes from Spanish. The name is in late medieval Spanish, and it might have got there from Arabic, or might not.^[21] [14]
typhoon: see Monsoon

V[edit]

varanoid (in lizard taxonomy), Varanus (lizard genus): ورل waral and locally (particularly in Algeria) ورن waran, varanoid lizard especially Varanus griseus. In Europe in the 16th to 18th centuries it was usually spelled with an L, e.g. "varal" (1677, French), "oûaral" (1725, French), "worral" (1828 English dictionary), but certain influential writers in the early 19th century adopted the N spelling.^[22] The V in place of W reflects Latinization. Historically in Latin and Romance languages there was no letter W. [15]
vizier: see sultan

Z[edit]

zenith: سمت samt, direction; سمت الرأس samt al-rā's, direction vertically upwards, zenithal direction, literally the "top direction". Samt al-rā's is in the astronomy books of, for example, Al-Farghani (lived mid 9th century)^[23] and Al-Battani (died 929),^[24] both of whom were translated to Latin in the 12th century. From its use in astronomy in Arabic, the term was borrowed into astronomy in Latin in the 12th century, with the first record in the West in the Arabic-to-Latin translation of Al-Battani.^[24] Crossref the word nadir, whose first record in the West is in the very same Arabic-to-Latin translation. [16]
zero: صفر sifr, zero. Medieval Arabic sifr -> Latin zephirum = "zero" (used in 1202 by Leonardo of Pisa, who was one of the early Latin adopters of the Hindu-Arabic numeral system) -> Old Italian zefiro (used by Piero Borgi in the 1480s)^[25] -> contracted to zero in Old Italian before 1485 -> French zéro 1485^[11] -> English zero 1604; rare in English before 1800.^[26] Crossref cipher. [17]

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

tartar (a chemical), tartrates (chemicals), tartaric acid: Early records of tartar as a chemical name in Latin are in the mid-12th century in the medical books of the Salernitan school of medicine in southern Italy, designating a substance that consisted mainly of what is now called potassium bitartrate.^[27] The origin of the name is obscure. It is not in classical Latin or Greek in a chemical sense although there was a mythological hell called Tartarus. The ancient Greeks and Romans used tartar, including in medicine; e.g.Dioscorides in Greek in the 1st century AD called it trux.^[28] The medieval Arabs used tartar and their usual name for it was دردي durdī. An Arabic parent for the name "tartar" has been speculatively suggested by Devic,^[29] Skeat,^[30] Weekley,^[31] and others. [18]
tobacco: The English word comes from Spanish. A majority of dictionaries say the Spanish comes from the Amerindian language of Haiti. But: "Spanish tabaco (also Italian tabacco) was a name of medicinal herbs from circa 1410, from Arabic tabbaq, attested since the 9th century as the name of various herbs. So the word may be a European one transferred to an American plant."^[32] [19]
traffic: This word, which is in the great majority of European languages today, is seen earliest in early 14th century Italian.^[11] Records from Pisa in the 1320s have noun traffico and verb trafficare.^[33] The early meaning was "bringing merchandise to a distant selling market", more often than not by sea, "commerce, usually and especially long-distance commerce". The origin is obscure: various propositions have been aired from Latin and Arabic sources but none very convincingly. The following are Arabic loanwords in English that got established in later medieval commerce on the Mediterranean Sea with start dates in Italian (also Catalan) earlier than Spanish or Portuguese: arsenal, average, carat, carrack, garble, magazine, sequin, tare (weight), and tariff. In view of those borrowings, and because "traffic" lacks a convincing derivation from Latin, an Arabic source for "traffic" is a possibility. [20]
zircon, zirconium: Today's definitions for zircon and zirconium were set by chemists in Germany around the year 1800. Medieval Arabic زرقون zarqūn meant cinnabar, red lead, and similar minerals. The Arabic was clearly borrowed into Spanish and Portuguese as azarcon | zarcão with the same meaning as the Arabic. But the connection between those and zircon is obscure. About half the etymology dictionaries take the position that zircon's ancestry is not known beyond the late-18th-century German word Zirkon. The other half say zircon descends from Arabic somehow, or probably does.^[34] [21]

Addenda for certain specialist vocabularies[edit]

Islamic terms[edit]

Main article: Glossary of Islam

Arabic astronomical and astrological names[edit]

Main article: List of Arabic star names

Arabic botanical names[edit]

The following plant names entered medieval Latin texts from Arabic. Today they are international systematic names ("Latin" names): Azadirachta, Berberis,Cakile, Carthamus, Cuscuta, Doronicum, Galanga, Musa, Nuphar, Ribes, Senna, Taraxacum, Usnea, Physalis alkekengi, Melia azedarach, Terminaliabellerica, Terminalia chebula, Cheiranthus cheiri, Piper cubeba, Phyllanthus emblica, Peganum harmala, Salsola kali, Prunus mahaleb, Datura metel,Daphne mezereum, Rheum ribes, Jasminum sambac, Cordia sebestena, Operculina turpethum, Curcuma zedoaria, Alpinia zerumbet + Zingiber zerumbet.(List incomplete.)^[35]

Over eighty percent of those botanical names were introduced to medieval Latin in a herbal medicine context. The Arabic-to-Latin translation of Ibn Sina's The Canon of Medicine helped establish many Arabic plant names in later medieval Latin, especially of medicinal plants of tropical Asian source for which there had been no prior Latin or Greek name, such as azedarach, bellerica, cubeba, emblica, galanga, metel, turpethum, zedoaria and zerumbet.^[35] A book about medicating agents by Serapion the Younger containing hundreds of Arabic botanical words circulated in Latin among apothecaries in the 14th and 15th centuries.^[36] Medieval Arabic botany was primarily concerned with the use of plants for medicines. In a modern etymology analysis of one medieval Arabic list of medicines, the names of the medicines —primarily plant names— were assessed to be 31% ancient Mesopotamian names, 23% Greek names, 18% Persian, 13% Indian (often via Persian), 5% uniquely Arabic, and 3% Egyptian, with the remaining 7% of unassessable origin.^[37]

The Italian botanist Prospero Alpini stayed in Egypt for several years in the 1580s. He introduced to Latin botany from Arabic from Egypt the names Abrus,Abelmoschus, Lablab, Melochia, each of which designated plants that were unknown to Western European botanists before Alpini, plants native to tropical Asia that were grown with artificial irrigation in Egypt at the time.^[38] In the early 1760s Peter Forsskål systematically cataloged plants and fishes in the Red Seaarea. For genera and species that did not already have Latin names, Forsskål used the common Arabic names as the scientific names. This became the international standard for most of what he cataloged. Forsskål's Latinized Arabic plant genus names include Aerva, Arnebia, Cadaba, Ceruana, Maerua,Maesa, Themeda, and others.^[39]

Some additional miscellaneous botanical names with Arabic ancestry include Abutilon, Alchemilla, Alhagi, Argania, argel, Averrhoa, Avicennia, azarolus +acerola, bonduc, lebbeck, Retama, seyal.^[40] (List incomplete).

Arabic textile words[edit]

The list above included the six textiles cotton, damask, gauze, macrame, mohair, & muslin, and several textile dyes. The following are six lesser-used textile fabric words that were not listed. Some of them are archaic. Baldachin [22], Barracan [23], Camaca [24], Camlet^[41] [25], Morocco leather^[42] [26], and Tabby [27]. Those have established Arabic ancestry. The following are six textile fabric words whose ancestry is not established and not adequately in evidence, but Arabic ancestry is entertained by many reporters. Five of the six have Late Medieval start dates in the Western languages and the sixth started in the 16th century. Buckram [28], Chiffon [29], Fustian [30], Gabardine [31], Satin [32], and Wadding (padding) [33]. The fabric Taffeta [34]has provenance in 14th-century French and Italian and is believed to come ultimately from a Persian word for woven (tāftah), and it might have Arabic intermediation. Fustic [35] is a textile dye. The name goes back to late medieval Spanish fustet dye, which is thought to be from Arabic فستق fustuq = "pistachio".^[43] Carthamin is another old textile dye. Its name was borrowed in the late medieval West from Arabic قرطم qirtim | qurtum = "the carthamin dye plant or its seeds".^[44] The textile industry was the largest manufacturing industry in the Arabic-speaking lands in the medieval and early modern eras.

Arabic cuisine words[edit]

Part of the vocabulary of Middle Eastern cuisine is from Turkish, not Arabic. The following words are from Arabic, although some of them have entered the West via Turkish. Baba ghanoush, Couscous, Falafel, Fattoush, Halva, Hummus, Kibbeh, Kebab, Lahmacun, Shawarma, Tabouleh, Tahini, Za'atar .... and some cuisine words of lesser circulation are Ful medames, Kabsa, Kushari, Labneh, Mahlab, Mulukhiyah, Ma'amoul, Mansaf, Shanklish, Tepsi Baytinijan .... For more see Arab cuisine.

Arabic music words[edit]

Some words used in English in talking about Arabic music: Ataba, Baladi, Dabke, Darbouka, Khaleeji, Maqam, Mawal, Mizmar, Oud, Qanun, Raï, Raqs sharqi, Takht, Taqsim.

Notes about the List[edit]

The various etymology dictionaries are not always consistent with each other. This reflects differences in judgment about the reliability or uncertainty of a given etymological derivation.

Obsolete words and very rarely used non-technical words are not included in the list, but some specialist technical words are included. For example, the technical word "alidade" comes from the Arabic name for an ancient measuring device used to determine line-of-sight direction. Despite few English-speaking people being acquainted with it, the device's name remains part of the vocabulary of English-speaking surveyors, and today's instrument uses modern technology, and is included in the list.

There are no words on the list where the transfer from Arabic to a Western language occurred before the ninth century AD; the earliest records of transfer are in ninth century Latin. Before then some words were transferred into Latin from Semitic sources (usually via Greek intermediation), including some that later ended up in English, but in most cases the Semitic source was not Arabic and in the rest of the cases it is impossible to know whether the Semitic source was Arabic or not. See List of English words of Semitic origin, excluding words known to be of Hebrew or Arabic origin.

The list has been restricted to loan words: It excludes loan translations. Here's an example of a loan translation. Surrounding the brain and spinal chord is a tough outer layer of membrane called the dura mater. The words dura and mater are each in Latin from antiquity. Medieval Latin dura mater [cerebri], literally "hard mother [of the brain]" is a loan-translation of Arabic الأمّ الجافية al-umm al-jāfīa [al-dimāgh], literally "dry-husk mother [of the brain]"^[45] (in Arabic the words father, mother and son are often used to denote relationships between things). As another well-known example, the word "sine"—as in sine, cosine and tangent—has its first record with that meaning in an Arabic-to-Latin book translation in the 12th century, translating Arabic jayb. Jayb had a second and quite unrelated meaning in Arabic that was translatable to Latin as sinus and the translator took up that connection to confer a new meaning to the Latin sinus, in preference to borrowing the foreign word jayb.^[46] About half of the loan-words on the list have their earliest record in a Western language in the 12th or 13th century. Some additional, unquantified number of terms were brought into the West in the 12th and 13th centuries by Arabic-to-Latin translators who used loan-translations in preference to loan-words. Some related information is at Translations from Arabic to Latin in the 12th century.

Footnotes[edit]

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.
Jump up^ In the 14th-century Arabic dictionary of Fairuzabadi, normal definitions of well-known words were given by the notation م denoting "well-known (definition unnecessary)", and طبل tabl was so given. Baheth.info has the definition of tabl in four medieval Arabic dictionaries. In Arabic dictionaries today, another written form of the noun is طبلة tabla. But that is not in medieval and early modern dictionaries. In some of today's Urdu dictionaries, طبل is one of the words for a drum.
Jump up^ Talq = "mica or talc" is seen in Arabic writings by Jabir Ibn Hayyan (died 815), Al-Jahiz (died 869), Yahya ibn Sarafyun (died before 900), Al-Razi (died circa 930), Al-Masudi (died 956), Ibn Sina (died 1037), Ibn Al-Baitar (died 1248), and others. Ref: ref1; ref2; ref3. The influential Latin alchemist Pseudo-Geber, who was influenced by Arabic literature, used the word in Latin around 1300 (ref4). He was not the only late medieval Latin alchemist who used it (ref5). But the word is not in the extensive medieval Latin glossary of Du Cange (ref6) and the earliest attestations in the vernacular Western languages come relatively late: Spanish = 1492, German = 1526, Italian = 1550, French = 1553, English talcum = 1558, English talc = 1582. ref7, ref1, ref8. The writings of Paracelsus (died 1541) increased the circulation of the word in 16th-century Europe.
Jump up^ "Talisman" with its current meaning is first recorded in French in 1592 (CNRTL.fr), in English in 1638 (NED), and the same meaning is in Italian and Spanish. But in the Western languages for three centuries before 1638 and continuing for a while after, a "talismani" meant an Islamic prayer leader or mullah, as documented in Yule & Burnell (page 893). More details on the history of the word are at English Words That Are Of Arabic Etymological Ancestry, Note #137.
Jump up^ In Latin, tamarindi occurs in the later 11th century in the Arabic-to-Latin medical translator Constantinus Africanus (ref), and the word is frequent in the writings of the 12th century medical school at Salerno in southern Italy (collected in the five-volume set Collectio Salernitana). It entered late medieval English in medical books that were influenced by the Salernitan school (see the Middle English Dictionary). In Arabic, the book on medicaments by Ibn al-Baitar (died 1248) gives brief summaries of the statements of a handful of medieval Arabic medical writers about tamr hindī – ref: page 166-167. One of the people quoted by Ibn al-Baitar says the tamarind "grows in Yemen and India and Central Africa [Bilād al-Sūdān]". The tamarind has a large number of different names spread across the languages of Central Africa, and the tree is evidently native in Central Africa. Nevertheless Arabic medicine got introduced to the tamarind from India. Another one of the medieval commentators quoted by Ibn al-Baitar says the tamarind is used as a cuisine item in Oman. That is surely true, but other evidence indicates that tamarind's use as a cuisine item was rare among the medieval Arabs (ref1, ref2), though it was not rare in medieval India (ref). The most commonly recorded use of the tamarind among the medieval Arabs and Latins was as a laxative (see the medical books just referenced, including Ibn al-Baitar's).
Jump up^ Early Medieval Aramaic has ṭnbwr = "long-necked string instrument", with records in the Syriac and Jewish Babylonian Aramaic dialects. Aramaic writing systems omit short vowels, so ṭnbwr may be read as tanbawr | tunboūr | etc. Search Tnbwr* at Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon. An Arabic writer who wrote at length about the tunbūr was Al-Farabi (died 950). A 17-page extract from Al-Farabi about the tunbūr is online in Arabic in Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference of Orientalists meeting in Leiden year 1883. The records for the word tunbur | tanbur are many centuries older in Arabic and Aramaic than in Persian. In Persian the very old word for a long-necked string instrument was tar and dotar and setar – Dictionary of Music by Willi Apel, year 1969, entry under "Lute II".
Jump up^ "Tabor #1" (plus "tambour", "tamboura") in NED. More etymology details about the Western word tambour | tambourine meaning drum are at English Words That Are Of Arabic Etymological Ancestry, Note #140.
Jump up^ Origin of Cultivated Plants by Alphonse de Candolle (year 1885), pages 178–181 for lemon and lime, pages 183–188 for orange, page 188 for mandarin orange."Études sur les noms arabes des végétaux: l'oranger et ses congénères", by J.J. Clément-Mullet in Journal Asiatique sixième série Tome XV, pages 17 to 41, year 1870.
Jump up^ "Tangerine" in NED (year 1919). Like Levant -> Levantine, Alexandria -> Alexandrine, and Damascus -> Damascene, "Tangerine" meaning "of Tangier city" has records in English that pre-date the creation of "tangerine" the orange. The English word "tang" meaning piquant flavour was also in English before "tangerine" the orange. Incidentally, Morocco today is one of the world's biggest exporters of fresh tangerine and mandarin oranges, with the exports mostly in the form calledclementine, which is a variety of tangerine with no seeds and a less tangy taste. Tangier is not one of the main export ports – ref.^{[dead link]}
Jump up^ www.Diccionari.cat (in Catalan).
^ Jump up to:^a ^b ^c ^d More details at CNRTL.fr Etymologie in French language. This site is a division of the French National Centre for Scientific Research.
Jump up^ The first record of "tare" in England, recorded 1380, is in Anglo-Norman French in London; and the first pure English record for "tare" is in 1429 as per the MED. Later records are cited in the NED.
Jump up^ Glossaire des mots espagnols et portugais dérivés de l'arabe by R. Dozy & W.H. Engelmann. 430 pages. Published in 1869.
Jump up^ In medieval and modern Arabic where tarha = "a discard", al-tarha = "the discard" but the written al-tarha is universally always pronounced "at-tarha" (seepronunciation of al- in Arabic). At-tarha transfers into medieval Spanish as atara.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b 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.
Jump up^ Catalan tarifa is first recorded in 1315 – Diccionari.cat. Italian tariffa 1358, and French tariffe 1572 – CNRTL.fr. Spanish tarifa 1680 – Raja Tazi 1998 citingCorominas.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b Ibn al-Baitar's 13th century Book of Simple Medicaments and Foods is online in Arabic (5 megabytes; PDF) (tarkhūn on page 558), and in German translation (year 1842, tarkhūn in volume 2 page 156). The book was compiled in the 1240s. It says طرخون tarkhūn is a herb that grows to a height of between ahandspan and a forearm tall, has long narrow delicate leaves, and has "camphor-like" aromatic qualities, and the leaves can be dined on at table mixed with mint and other herbs, but when chewed in quantity it causes a numbing effect in the mouth. Ibn al-Baitar gives excerpts from ten medieval Arabic commentators about the plant. The commentators are not totally consistent with each other in what they have to say, and some of them are exclusively interested in the medical utility of the numbing effect. Ibn Al-Baitar himself says tarkhūn is "a herb well-known among the people of the Levant". More than three centuries later, in the 1570s, a German visitor to the Levant, the physician and botanist Leonhard Rauwolff, observed that the local inhabitants of Lebanon used tarragon culinarily and called it "Tarchon" – Der Raiß inn die Morgenländer, year 1582 page 24. Ibn al-Awwam in 12th century southern Spain has طرخون tarkhūn listed together with mint, endive, rocket (arugula), basil, parsley, chard, and a few other small leafy plants of an ordinary vegetable garden – ref.
Jump up^ See "tarragon" in the NED (year 1919). A late-13th-century Latin medical dictionary, "Synonyma Medicinae" by Simon of Genoa, spelled it both tarcon andtarchon and defined the plant solely by saying what was written about it by Avicenna. One of the things noted in the NED is that an English botany book explaining Latin names in English in 1548 said: "[Latin] Tarchon... is called with us [English] Tarragon". The earliest cited record in French is 1539 (earliest English is 1538). The early French is in the form targon – CNRTL.fr. Later-16th-century French also has the forms tragon | estragon = "tarragon". The 18th-century French etymology writerJacob Le Duchat and others believed in the idea that the word had arisen within the Latinate languages as a mutant of the classical Latin draco[n] = "dragon", an idea which they supported with the fact that various botanicals have been called dragonwort, Dracunculus and suchlike in Europe going back uninterruptedly to classical Greek and Roman times. No one entertains that idea today. "It would be the sole example of Latin dr becoming tr in French." – Marcel Devic, year 1876. Italiandragoncello = "tarragon" is historically younger than Italian targoncello | targone | tarcone | taracone = "tarragon" – Etimo.it; see also Italian tarcóne + taracóne inJohn Florio's year 1611 Italian-to-English Dictionary. However, the Arabic tarkhūn = "tarragon" doesn't look very native in Arabic (especially, the ending "-ūn" looks non-native) and today's dictionaries widely entertain the idea that the Arabic may have been derived from the ancient Greek drakōn = "dragon".
Jump up^ Classical Latin borrowed the letter Y from Greek in the 1st century BC to represent the Greek letter Υ, which in Greek was pronounced approximately "eu" (/ü/). Up until the 1st century BC, Latin borrowings from Greek had used the Latin letter U to represent this Greek sound. The Latin letter Y in its early history was pronounced in the same way as the Greek letter Υ. The Latin that survives from Spain from the era of Isidore of Seville, including the output of Isidore himself, preserves classical usages, in general. Thynni (the plural of thynnus) is in Isidore of Seville's Origines Book XII paragraph 6 (in Latin).
Jump up^ The earliest records of the "albacora" tunafish name are in 16th-century Spanish and Portuguese. The origin of the name is obscure according to the Diccionario de la lengua española de la Real Academia Española – ref: Diccionario RAE. Old Arabic dictionaries do not contain a phonetically similar word with the meaning of a fish – ref: Dozy (year 1869, pages 61 & 388). "Alba" is a classical Latin and old Spanish & Portuguese word for white (e.g. English albino is borrowed from Portuguese); and the Portuguese word for color is "cor". Hence "albacora" may have been created in Portuguese meaning "white color" [tuna meat] – that is the judgement of the Portuguese and Arabic expert pt:José Pedro Machado. But there is uncertainty because the Portuguese word did not have the exclusive meaning of white meat tuna. It could also designate the Thunnus albacares tuna species. Another consideration is the 16th century start date of the Spanish and Portuguese word. Spanish & Portuguese had stopped borrowing words from Arabic well before the 16th century. Of the words they had borrowed from Arabic in the earlier centuries, the large majority of those in use today are found in writing before the 16th century. A small minority, borrowed before the 16th century, do not show up in writing until the 16th century.
Jump up^ Bonítol is a commercially caught bonito-type fish in Catalan records in 1313, 1361, 1365, 1370 and later – "Una llista de peixos valencians de Mariano Bru" by Antoni Corcoll in Estudis de Llengua i Literatura Catalanes, Volume XL, year 2000, pages 21 - 22. The terminal letter L in Catalan bonítol is a diminutive (similarly, Catalan fillol = "godson" is from Catalan fill = "son" and classical Latin formula is from forma = "form"). Some dictionaries report the name bonito may be a Spanish-ization of بينيث baynīth which is a sea fish in medieval Arabic general dictionaries (including Lisan al-Arab); others report the name's origin is unknown or may be from Spanish bonito = "pretty good".
Jump up^ Varan @ CNRTL.fr (in French).
Jump up^ The following book published in 1669 consists of a text in Arabic by Al-Farghani (aka Alfraganus), plus a translation of the text into Latin by Jacobus Golius, plus notes by the translator. The Arabic page with the term "samt al-rā's" is here and the translator has a note about it in Latin here. The translator notes that the term was used by Arabic writers in two ways, (1) the top path (which is a direction; vertically up) and (2) the top of a path (which is a point).
^ Jump up to:^a ^b Al-Battani's Kitāb Al-Zīj was translated to Latin around 1140. The translator was Plato Tiburtinus. In the translation, Al-Battani's Arabic samt al-rā's = "top path" was written down in Latin as zenith capitis and zenith capitum. The Latin capitis | capitum = "head (or top)" is a straight translation of Arabic rā's = "head (or top)". Today's etymology dictionaries are unanimous that the Latin zenith was a mangling of Arabic samt = "direction (or path)". In the same book translated by Plato Tiburtinus, Arabic سمت مطلع samt motalaa = "direction to the rising sun" was translated as Latin zenith ascensionis (chapter 7); قد تعرف السمت qad taarif al-samt = "the direction can be made known by" was translated as zenith sciri potest (chapter 11); سمت الجنوب samt al-janoub = "southern direction" was translated as zenith meridianum (chapter 12) (where medieval Latin meridianus meant "southern" and "midday"). In other words, for Plato Tiburtinus zenith meant "direction" and did not mean "zenith". But the direction that was used the most was the samt al-rā's = zenith capitis = "zenithal direction; vertically up". The phrase zenith capitis or zenith capitum meaning "zenith" occurs in medieval Latin in Johannes de Sacrobosco (died circa 1245) (ref), Roger Bacon (died 1294) (ref), Albertus Magnus (died 1280)(ref), and others. Later writers dropped the capitis and used zenith alone to mean the zenith capitis. Refs: zenith at CNRTL.fr; zenith in Brill's Encyclopaedia of Islam, 1st Edition; zenith capitis and zenith capitum in Plato Tiburtinus in Latin; سمت الرأس samt al-ra's in Al-Battani's book in Arabic.
Jump up^ The Introduction and Spread of the Hindu-Arabic Numerals, by Smith and Karpinski, year 1911, page 59: Online.
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.
Jump up^ Details at English Words That Are Of Arabic Etymological Ancestry, Note #187.
Jump up^ The Materia Medica of Dioscorides is downloadable from links on the Wikipedia Dioscorides page. Trux meaning "tartar" is in Dioscorides' Book 5 section 132, where Dioscorides briefly describes how to make it and how to use it in medicine.
Jump up^ Dictionnaire Étymologique Des Mots Français D'Origine Orientale, by L. Marcel Devic, year 1876.
Jump up^ Reported in An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, by Walter W. Skeat, year 1888. Downloadable.
Jump up^ An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English (year 1921), by Ernest Weekley.
Jump up^ Harper, Douglas. "tobacco". Online Etymology Dictionary. The same is reported by Diccionario RAE and Diccionari.cat. Cf Medieval Arabic طبّاق @ Baheth.info. A number of reports in Spanish in the 16th century clearly say the word tabaco is indigenous to the West Indies – CNRTL.fr. According to the same and other reports at the time, there were a number of indigenous names for tobacco in the West Indies and tabaco was not one of those names strictly speaking, and the reporters are in conflict about what the indigenous name tabaco meant, and they are writing after tobaco had already been established in Spanish in the New World – NED.
Jump up^ "Traffic" in NED (1926).
Jump up^ Ibn al-Baitar (died 1248) used word zarqūn for red lead or cinnabar, which are red-coloured minerals chemically different from zircon. The derived Spanish azarcon and Portuguese zarcão had the sense of a specifically red-colored mineral, typically red lead or cinnabar – Dozy year 1869 page 225. This is thought by some to be the source-word for the not-at-all-red zircon gemstone Jargoon, which in turn is thought by some to be the source-word for zircon; dictionaries expressing support for this idea include Yule & Burnell, Weekley, Webster's New World Dictionary (2010), Collins English Dictionary, NED: zircon, NED: jargoon, Klein. Today's English word zircon certainly came from 18th-century German Zirkon. Available evidence that Zirkon came from jargon (the zircon gemstone) is incomplete, and evidence that jargon came from zarqūn is completely missing. Dictionaries not supporting the idea that Zirkon descends from Arabic include Concise OED, Merriam-Webster, Random House, CNRTL.fr (in French), Raja Tazi (in German). According to Diccionario RAE, Zirkon came from Spanish circón which came from Arabic zarqūn and there is no role for jargon in the etymology. According to American Heritage Dictionary, Zirkon came from Arabic siriqun, a different word, without a Spanish connection.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b References for the medieval Arabic sources and medieval Latin borrowings of those plant names are as follows. Ones marked "(F)" go to the French dictionary atCentre National de Ressources Textuelles et Lexicales, ones marked "(R)" go to Random House Dictionary, and other references are identified with terse labels:Berberis(R), انبرباريس anbarbārīs = Berberis(Ibn Sina), امبرباريس ambarbārīs = Berberis(Ibn Al-Baitar), الأمبرباريس al-ambarbārīs is also called البرباريس al-barbārīs(Fairuzabadi's dictionary), Galen uses name "Oxyacantha" for Berberis(John Gerarde), Arabic amiberberis = Latin Berberis(Matthaeus Silvaticus),Berberis is frequent in Constantinus Africanus (Constantinus Africanus was the introducer of plantname Berberis into medieval Latin), Berberis(Raja Tazi 1998),Barberry(Skeat 1888);; Cakile(Henri Lammens 1890), Cakile(Pierre Guigues 1905), Kakile Serapionis(John Gerarde 1597), Chakile(Serapion the Younger, medieval Latin);; for Carthamus see Carthamin;; Cuscute(F), Cuscuta(Helmut Genaust), spelled كشوث kushūth in Ibn al-Baitar;; Doronicum(F), Doronicum(R), spelled درونج dorūnaj in Ibn al-Baitar;; Garingal & Galanga(F), Galingale & Galanga(NED);; Musa(Devic), Musa(Alphita), موز mauz(Ibn al-Baitar), Muse #4 and Musa(NED);; Nuphar (nénuphar)(F), Nuphar (nenufar)(NED), Nénuphar(Lammens);; Ribes(F), Ribès(Pierre Guigues 1903 in preface to translation of Najm al-Din Mahmud (died 1330)), Ribes(Lammens 1890), the meaning of late medieval Latin ribes was Rheum ribes – e.g. e.g. – and the medieval Arabic ريباس rībāshad the very same meaning – e.g. ;; Senna(F), Senna(R), Séné(Lammens), Sene in Alphita, السنى al-sanā and السني al-senī in Ibn al-Baitar;;Taraxacum(Skeat), Ataraxacon(Alphita), Taraxacum(R);; Usnea(F), Usnea(R), Usnee(Simon of Genoa), Usnée(Lammens);; alkekengi(F),alkekengi(R);; azedarach(F), azedarach(Garland Cannon), azadarach + azedarach(Matthaeus Silvaticus anno 1317), Azadirachta(Helmut Genaust);;bellerica(Yule), bellerica(Devic), beliligi = belirici = bellerici(Simon of Genoa), بليلج belīlej in Ibn al-Baitar;; chebula(Yule), kebulus = chebulae(Alphita),chébule(Devic);; cheiranthe(Devic), keiri(NED), خيري kheīrī(Ibn al-Awwam);; cubeba(F), cubeba(R);; emblic(Yule), emblic(Devic), emblic(Serapion the Younger);; harmala(Tazi), harmale(Devic), harmala(other);; (Salsola) kali(F), kali = a marine littoral plant, an Arabic name(Simon of Genoa year 1292 in Latin, also in Matthaeus Silvaticus);; mahaleb(F), mahaleb(Ibn al-Awwam), mahaleb(Matthaeus Silvaticus year 1317);; mathil->metel(other), metel(Devic), nux methel(Serapion the Younger), metel(other);; mezereum(R), mézéréon(Devic), mezereon(Alphita: see editor's footnote quoting Matthaeus Silvaticus and John Gerarde), spelled مازريون māzarīūn in Ibn Sina and Ibn al-Baitar;; sambac(Devic), zambacca(synonyms of Petrus de Abano, died c. 1316), sambacus(Simon of Genoa), زنبق = دهن الياسمين(zanbaq in Lisan al-Arab);; sebesten(other), sebesten(Devic), sebesten(Alphita) (sebesten in late medieval Latin referred to Cordia myxa, not Cordia sebestena, and the medieval Arabic سبستان sebestān was Cordia myxa);; turpeth(F), turpeth(R);; zedoaria(F), zedoaria(R);; zérumbet(F), zerumbet is from medieval Latin zurumbet | zurumbeth | zerumbet | zirumbet which is from Arabic زرنباد zurunbād | zarunbād which medievally in Latin and Arabic meant Curcuma zedoaria. The great majority of the above plant names can be seen in Latin in the late-13th-century medical-botany dictionary Synonyma Medicinae by Simon of Genoa (online) and in the mid-15th-century medical-botany dictionary called the Alphita (online); and the few that are not in either of those two Latin dictionaries may be seen in Latin in the book on medicaments by Serapion the Younger circa 1300 (online). None of the names are found in Latin in early medieval or classsical Latin botany or medicine books. The Arabic predecessors of the great majority of the above plant names can be seen in Arabic as entries in Part Two of Ibn Sina's The Canon of Medicine, dated early 11th century, which became a widely circulated book in Latin in the 13th and 14th centuries: an Arabic copy is atDDC.AUB.edu.lb. All of the Arabic predecessor plant-names without exception, and usually with better descriptions of the plants (compared to Ibn Sina's descriptions), are in Ibn al-Baitar's Book of Simple Medicaments and Foods, dated early 13th century, which was not translated to Latin in the medieval era but has since been published in German, French, and Arabic – Arabic copies are at Al-Mostafa.com and AlWaraq.net.
Jump up^ "Les Noms Arabes Dans Sérapion, Liber de Simplici Medicina", by Pierre Guigues, published in 1905 in Journal Asiatique, Series X, tome V, pages 473–546, continued in tome VI, pages 49–112.
Jump up^ Analysis of herbal medicine plant-names by Martin Levey reported by him in "Chapter III: Botanonymy" in his 1973 book Early Arabic Pharmacology: An Introduction.
Jump up^ Each discussed in Etymologisches Wörterbuch der botanischen Pflanzennamen, by Helmut Genaust, year 1996. Another Arabic botanical name introduced by Prospero Alpini from Egypt was Sesban meaning Sesbania sesban from synonymous Arabic سيسبان saīsabān | saīsbān (Helmut Genaust 1996; Lammens 1890; Ibn al-Baitar). The Latin botantical Abrus is the parent of the chemical name Abrin; see abrine @ CNRTL.fr. The Arabic لبلاب lablāb means any kind of climbing and twisting plant. The Latin and English Lablab is a certain vigorously climbing and twisting bean plant. Prospero Alpini called the plant in Latin phaseolus niger lablab = "lablab black bean". Prospero Alpini published his De Plantis Aegypti in 1592. It was republished in 1640 with supplements by other botanists – De Plantis Aegypti, 1640. De Plantis Exoticis by Prospero Alpini (died 1617) was published in 1639 – ref.
Jump up^ A list of 43 of Forsskål's Latinized Arabic fish names is at Baheyeldin.com/linguistics. Forsskål was a student of Arabic language as well as of taxonomy. His published journals contain the underlying Arabic names as well as his Latinizations of them (downloadable from links at the Wikipedia Peter Forsskål page).
Jump up^ Most of those miscellaneous botanical names are discussed in Etymologisches Wörterbuch der botanischen Pflanzennamen, by Helmut Genaust, year 1996. About half of them are in Dictionnaire Étymologique Des Mots Français D'Origine Orientale, by L. Marcel Devic, year 1876. The following are supplemental notes. The names argel and seyal were introduced to scientific botany nomenclature from الحرجل harjel and سيال seyāl in the early 19th century by the botanist Delile, who had visited North Africa. Retama comes from an old Spanish name for broom bushes and the Spanish name is from medieval Arabic رتم ratam with the same meaning –ref, ref. Acerola is from tropical New World Spanish acerola = "acerola cherry" which is from medieval Spanish and Portuguese acerola | azerola | azarola = "azarole hawthorn" which is from medieval Arabic الزعرور al-zoʿrūr = "azarole hawthorn" – ref, ref. Alchimilla appears in 16th century Europe with the same core meaning as today's Alchemilla (e.g.). Reporters on Alchemilla agree it is from Arabic although they do not agree on how.
Jump up^ In late medieval English, chamelet | chamlet was a costly fabric and was typically an import from the Near East – MED, NED. Today spelled "camlet", it is synonymous with French camelot which the French CNRTL.fr says is "from Arabic khamlāt, plural of khamla, meaning plush woollen cloth.... The stuff was made in the Orient and introduced to the Occident at the same time as the word." The historian Wilhelm Heyd (1886) says: "The [medieval] Arabic khamla meant cloth with a long nap, cloth with a lot of plush. This is the common character of all the camlets [of late medieval commerce]. They could be made from diverse materials.... Some were made from fine goat hair." – Histoire du commerce du Levant au moyen-âge, Volume 2 pages 703-705, by W. Heyd, year 1886. The medieval Arabic word was also in the form khamīla. Definitions of خملة khamla | خميلة khamīla taken from some medieval Arabic dictionaries are in Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon page 813.
Jump up^ The English name morocco meaning a type of leather is a refreshed spelling of early 16th century English maroquin, from 15th century French maroquin meaning a soft flexible leather from the country of Morocco. In later centuries the name morocco designated a soft flexible leather made in any country. Maroquin @ NED,morocco @ NED, maroquin @ CNRTL.fr.
Jump up^ Fustic in the late medieval centuries was a dye from the wood of a Mediterranean tree. After the discovery of America, a better, more durable dye from a tree wood was found, and given the same name. The late medieval fustic came from the Rhus cotinus tree. "Rhus cotinus wood was treated in warm [or boiling] water; a yellow infusion was obtained which on contact with air turned into brown; with acids it becomes greenish yellow and with alkalies orange; in combination with iron salts, especially with ferrous sulphate a greenish-black was produced." – The Art of Dyeing in the History of Mankind, by Franco Brunello, year 1973 page 382. The earliest record of the word as a dye in the Western languages is in 13th-century Spanish as "fustet", followed by 14th-century French as "fustet" and "fustel" – CNRTL.fr,DMF, Lexilogos. Medieval Spanish had the somewhat phonetically similar alfóstigo = "pistachio", which was from Arabic al-fustuq = "the pistachio". Medieval Arabic additionally had fustuqī = "the yellow-green color of the pistachio nut" (e.g.), (e.g.). The use of the word as a dye in medieval Arabic is not recorded under the entry for fustuq in the 1997 book A Dictionary of Andalusi Arabic nor under the entries for fustuq in the medieval Arabic dictionaries – Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon, page 2395, Baheth.info. This suggests that the use of the word as a dye may have started in Spanish. From a phonetic view the medieval Spanish and French fustet is a diminutive of the medieval Spanish and French fuste = "boards of wood, timber", which was from classical Latin fustis = "wooden stick" – DRAE,Lexilogos.com, Du Cange. The semantic transformation from "pistachio" to "fustic dye" is poorly understood, assuming it happened. New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (year 1901) says "the name was transferred from the pistachio [tree] to the closely allied Rhus cotinus". But the two trees are not closely allied.
Jump up^ "Carthamin" and "Carthamus" in New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (year 1893). Similarly summarized in CNRTL.fr (French) and Diccionario RAE(Spanish). Also in Origin of Cultivated Plants by Alphonse de Candolle (year 1885). For the word in medieval Arabic see قرطم @ Baheth.info (see also عصفرʿusfur), قرطم @ Ibn al-Awwam and قرطم @ Ibn al-Baitar.
Jump up^ The Latin anatomy term dura mater has its earliest record in Latin in the medical writer Constantinus Africanus (died c. 1087). Constantinus Africanus has a 4-page chapter entitled "the composition of the membranes situated on the interior of the skull" (it is in Latin at Ref, and a variant Latin edition is downloadable at Ref). This was the place of birth of the term dura mater in Latin anatomy. Constantinus was fluent in Arabic and most of his overall content was taken from Arabic sources. For his material on dura mater, Constantinus's source was Ali Ibn Al-Abbas Al-Majusi, aka Haly Abbas (died c. 990). Details about how dura mater arose as an Arabic loan-translation are on pages 95-96 (including footnote #27) of the article "Constantine's pseudo-Classical terminology and its survival", by Gotthard Strohmaier in the bookConstantine the African and ʻAlī Ibn Al-ʻAbbās Al-Maǧūsī: The Pantegni and Related Texts, year 1994. Constantinus's chapter with the term dura mater also contains the first known use of the term pia mater, which for Constantinus had the same meaning as it has today (i.e. a certain membrane lying between the brain and the skull), and this too was a loan-translation from Arabic – the term was al-umm al-raqīqa = "thin mother" in Ali Ibn Al-Abbas. Cf pia mater @ NED , pia mater @ CNRTL.fr. Early adopters of the names dura mater and pia mater include William of Conches (died c. 1154) and Roger Frugard (died c. 1195), both of whom took lots of material from Constantinus. As noted by Strohmaier (1994), the classical Greek medical writer Galen (died c. 200 AD) was acquainted with the dura mater and the pia mater, which he called in Greek sklera meninx (literally "hard membrane") and lepte meninx (literally "thin membrane"), also spelled μῆνιγξ. For the medieval Arabic writers on medicine including Ali Ibn Al-Abbas, the writings of Galen were the most quoted and requoted antecedent source for their knowledge of anatomy. For the early medieval Latins, the writings of Galen were mostly unknown and not in circulation – although a smallish subset was in circulation. The later medieval Latins were introduced to new Galen texts from Arabic sources in the 12th century. Subsequently the Latins found Galen in Late Byzantine sources.
Jump up^ Webster's (1913), Dictionary.Reference.com (2010), sinus#2 @ CNRTL.fr, and many others. Cf medieval جيب jayb in Lane's Lexicon page 492.

General references[edit]

Centre National de Ressources Textuelles et Lexicales – well-referenced etymologies in French language
Arabismen im Deutschen: lexikalische Transferenzen vom Arabischen ins Deutsche, by Raja Tazi (year 1998). – 400-page book about the German words of Arabic ancestry. Mostly the same words that are seen in English. German got the words mostly from French and Latin, and thirdly from other European languages.
Baheth.info – searchable copies of large medieval Arabic dictionaries, including the dictionaries by Ibn Manzur, Fairuzabadi, and Al-Jawhari
Richardson's Persian-Arabic–English Dictionary, year 1852 Edition – 1400 pages; downloadable
Middle English Dictionary – biggest and best for late medieval English, fully searchable online
Online Etymology Dictionary – compiled by Douglas Harper – Online Etymology Dictionary
Dictionary.Reference.com – has the online copy of Random House Dictionary
CollinsDictionary.com – online copy of Collins English Dictionary
Concise OED – online copy of Concise Oxford English Dictionary
TheFreeDictionary.com – has online copy of American Heritage Dictionary
Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary – online copy of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary
An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English (year 1921), by Ernest Weekley – downloadable, 850 pages, a good compilation of short summary etymologies
An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language (year 1888), by Walter W. Skeat – sometimes found incorrect by later research but usually not

Addenda for certain specialist vocabularies[edit]

Islamic terms[edit]

Main article: Glossary of Islam

Arabic astronomical and astrological names[edit]

Main article: List of Arabic star names

Arabic botanical names[edit]

Arabic textile words[edit]

Arabic cuisine words[edit]

Arabic music words[edit]

Some words used in English in talking about Arabic music: Ataba, Baladi, Dabke, Darbouka, Khaleeji, Maqam, Mawal, Mizmar, Oud, Qanun, Raï, Raqs sharqi, Takht, Taqsim.

Notes about the List[edit]

The various etymology dictionaries are not always consistent with each other. This reflects differences in judgment about the reliability or uncertainty of a given etymological derivation.

Footnotes[edit]

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.
Jump up^ In the 14th-century Arabic dictionary of Fairuzabadi, normal definitions of well-known words were given by the notation م denoting "well-known (definition unnecessary)", and طبل tabl was so given. Baheth.info has the definition of tabl in four medieval Arabic dictionaries. In Arabic dictionaries today, another written form of the noun is طبلة tabla. But that is not in medieval and early modern dictionaries. In some of today's Urdu dictionaries, طبل is one of the words for a drum.
Jump up^ Talq = "mica or talc" is seen in Arabic writings by Jabir Ibn Hayyan (died 815), Al-Jahiz (died 869), Yahya ibn Sarafyun (died before 900), Al-Razi (died circa 930), Al-Masudi (died 956), Ibn Sina (died 1037), Ibn Al-Baitar (died 1248), and others. Ref: ref1; ref2; ref3. The influential Latin alchemist Pseudo-Geber, who was influenced by Arabic literature, used the word in Latin around 1300 (ref4). He was not the only late medieval Latin alchemist who used it (ref5). But the word is not in the extensive medieval Latin glossary of Du Cange (ref6) and the earliest attestations in the vernacular Western languages come relatively late: Spanish = 1492, German = 1526, Italian = 1550, French = 1553, English talcum = 1558, English talc = 1582. ref7, ref1, ref8. The writings of Paracelsus (died 1541) increased the circulation of the word in 16th-century Europe.
Jump up^ "Talisman" with its current meaning is first recorded in French in 1592 (CNRTL.fr), in English in 1638 (NED), and the same meaning is in Italian and Spanish. But in the Western languages for three centuries before 1638 and continuing for a while after, a "talismani" meant an Islamic prayer leader or mullah, as documented in Yule & Burnell (page 893). More details on the history of the word are at English Words That Are Of Arabic Etymological Ancestry, Note #137.
Jump up^ In Latin, tamarindi occurs in the later 11th century in the Arabic-to-Latin medical translator Constantinus Africanus (ref), and the word is frequent in the writings of the 12th century medical school at Salerno in southern Italy (collected in the five-volume set Collectio Salernitana). It entered late medieval English in medical books that were influenced by the Salernitan school (see the Middle English Dictionary). In Arabic, the book on medicaments by Ibn al-Baitar (died 1248) gives brief summaries of the statements of a handful of medieval Arabic medical writers about tamr hindī – ref: page 166-167. One of the people quoted by Ibn al-Baitar says the tamarind "grows in Yemen and India and Central Africa [Bilād al-Sūdān]". The tamarind has a large number of different names spread across the languages of Central Africa, and the tree is evidently native in Central Africa. Nevertheless Arabic medicine got introduced to the tamarind from India. Another one of the medieval commentators quoted by Ibn al-Baitar says the tamarind is used as a cuisine item in Oman. That is surely true, but other evidence indicates that tamarind's use as a cuisine item was rare among the medieval Arabs (ref1, ref2), though it was not rare in medieval India (ref). The most commonly recorded use of the tamarind among the medieval Arabs and Latins was as a laxative (see the medical books just referenced, including Ibn al-Baitar's).
Jump up^ Early Medieval Aramaic has ṭnbwr = "long-necked string instrument", with records in the Syriac and Jewish Babylonian Aramaic dialects. Aramaic writing systems omit short vowels, so ṭnbwr may be read as tanbawr | tunboūr | etc. Search Tnbwr* at Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon. An Arabic writer who wrote at length about the tunbūr was Al-Farabi (died 950). A 17-page extract from Al-Farabi about the tunbūr is online in Arabic in Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference of Orientalists meeting in Leiden year 1883. The records for the word tunbur | tanbur are many centuries older in Arabic and Aramaic than in Persian. In Persian the very old word for a long-necked string instrument was tar and dotar and setar – Dictionary of Music by Willi Apel, year 1969, entry under "Lute II".
Jump up^ "Tabor #1" (plus "tambour", "tamboura") in NED. More etymology details about the Western word tambour | tambourine meaning drum are at English Words That Are Of Arabic Etymological Ancestry, Note #140.
Jump up^ Origin of Cultivated Plants by Alphonse de Candolle (year 1885), pages 178–181 for lemon and lime, pages 183–188 for orange, page 188 for mandarin orange."Études sur les noms arabes des végétaux: l'oranger et ses congénères", by J.J. Clément-Mullet in Journal Asiatique sixième série Tome XV, pages 17 to 41, year 1870.
Jump up^ "Tangerine" in NED (year 1919). Like Levant -> Levantine, Alexandria -> Alexandrine, and Damascus -> Damascene, "Tangerine" meaning "of Tangier city" has records in English that pre-date the creation of "tangerine" the orange. The English word "tang" meaning piquant flavour was also in English before "tangerine" the orange. Incidentally, Morocco today is one of the world's biggest exporters of fresh tangerine and mandarin oranges, with the exports mostly in the form calledclementine, which is a variety of tangerine with no seeds and a less tangy taste. Tangier is not one of the main export ports – ref.^{[dead link]}
Jump up^ www.Diccionari.cat (in Catalan).
^ Jump up to:^a ^b ^c ^d More details at CNRTL.fr Etymologie in French language. This site is a division of the French National Centre for Scientific Research.
Jump up^ The first record of "tare" in England, recorded 1380, is in Anglo-Norman French in London; and the first pure English record for "tare" is in 1429 as per the MED. Later records are cited in the NED.
Jump up^ Glossaire des mots espagnols et portugais dérivés de l'arabe by R. Dozy & W.H. Engelmann. 430 pages. Published in 1869.
Jump up^ In medieval and modern Arabic where tarha = "a discard", al-tarha = "the discard" but the written al-tarha is universally always pronounced "at-tarha" (seepronunciation of al- in Arabic). At-tarha transfers into medieval Spanish as atara.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b 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.
Jump up^ Catalan tarifa is first recorded in 1315 – Diccionari.cat. Italian tariffa 1358, and French tariffe 1572 – CNRTL.fr. Spanish tarifa 1680 – Raja Tazi 1998 citingCorominas.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b Ibn al-Baitar's 13th century Book of Simple Medicaments and Foods is online in Arabic (5 megabytes; PDF) (tarkhūn on page 558), and in German translation (year 1842, tarkhūn in volume 2 page 156). The book was compiled in the 1240s. It says طرخون tarkhūn is a herb that grows to a height of between ahandspan and a forearm tall, has long narrow delicate leaves, and has "camphor-like" aromatic qualities, and the leaves can be dined on at table mixed with mint and other herbs, but when chewed in quantity it causes a numbing effect in the mouth. Ibn al-Baitar gives excerpts from ten medieval Arabic commentators about the plant. The commentators are not totally consistent with each other in what they have to say, and some of them are exclusively interested in the medical utility of the numbing effect. Ibn Al-Baitar himself says tarkhūn is "a herb well-known among the people of the Levant". More than three centuries later, in the 1570s, a German visitor to the Levant, the physician and botanist Leonhard Rauwolff, observed that the local inhabitants of Lebanon used tarragon culinarily and called it "Tarchon" – Der Raiß inn die Morgenländer, year 1582 page 24. Ibn al-Awwam in 12th century southern Spain has طرخون tarkhūn listed together with mint, endive, rocket (arugula), basil, parsley, chard, and a few other small leafy plants of an ordinary vegetable garden – ref.
Jump up^ See "tarragon" in the NED (year 1919). A late-13th-century Latin medical dictionary, "Synonyma Medicinae" by Simon of Genoa, spelled it both tarcon andtarchon and defined the plant solely by saying what was written about it by Avicenna. One of the things noted in the NED is that an English botany book explaining Latin names in English in 1548 said: "[Latin] Tarchon... is called with us [English] Tarragon". The earliest cited record in French is 1539 (earliest English is 1538). The early French is in the form targon – CNRTL.fr. Later-16th-century French also has the forms tragon | estragon = "tarragon". The 18th-century French etymology writerJacob Le Duchat and others believed in the idea that the word had arisen within the Latinate languages as a mutant of the classical Latin draco[n] = "dragon", an idea which they supported with the fact that various botanicals have been called dragonwort, Dracunculus and suchlike in Europe going back uninterruptedly to classical Greek and Roman times. No one entertains that idea today. "It would be the sole example of Latin dr becoming tr in French." – Marcel Devic, year 1876. Italiandragoncello = "tarragon" is historically younger than Italian targoncello | targone | tarcone | taracone = "tarragon" – Etimo.it; see also Italian tarcóne + taracóne inJohn Florio's year 1611 Italian-to-English Dictionary. However, the Arabic tarkhūn = "tarragon" doesn't look very native in Arabic (especially, the ending "-ūn" looks non-native) and today's dictionaries widely entertain the idea that the Arabic may have been derived from the ancient Greek drakōn = "dragon".
Jump up^ Classical Latin borrowed the letter Y from Greek in the 1st century BC to represent the Greek letter Υ, which in Greek was pronounced approximately "eu" (/ü/). Up until the 1st century BC, Latin borrowings from Greek had used the Latin letter U to represent this Greek sound. The Latin letter Y in its early history was pronounced in the same way as the Greek letter Υ. The Latin that survives from Spain from the era of Isidore of Seville, including the output of Isidore himself, preserves classical usages, in general. Thynni (the plural of thynnus) is in Isidore of Seville's Origines Book XII paragraph 6 (in Latin).
Jump up^ The earliest records of the "albacora" tunafish name are in 16th-century Spanish and Portuguese. The origin of the name is obscure according to the Diccionario de la lengua española de la Real Academia Española – ref: Diccionario RAE. Old Arabic dictionaries do not contain a phonetically similar word with the meaning of a fish – ref: Dozy (year 1869, pages 61 & 388). "Alba" is a classical Latin and old Spanish & Portuguese word for white (e.g. English albino is borrowed from Portuguese); and the Portuguese word for color is "cor". Hence "albacora" may have been created in Portuguese meaning "white color" [tuna meat] – that is the judgement of the Portuguese and Arabic expert pt:José Pedro Machado. But there is uncertainty because the Portuguese word did not have the exclusive meaning of white meat tuna. It could also designate the Thunnus albacares tuna species. Another consideration is the 16th century start date of the Spanish and Portuguese word. Spanish & Portuguese had stopped borrowing words from Arabic well before the 16th century. Of the words they had borrowed from Arabic in the earlier centuries, the large majority of those in use today are found in writing before the 16th century. A small minority, borrowed before the 16th century, do not show up in writing until the 16th century.
Jump up^ Bonítol is a commercially caught bonito-type fish in Catalan records in 1313, 1361, 1365, 1370 and later – "Una llista de peixos valencians de Mariano Bru" by Antoni Corcoll in Estudis de Llengua i Literatura Catalanes, Volume XL, year 2000, pages 21 - 22. The terminal letter L in Catalan bonítol is a diminutive (similarly, Catalan fillol = "godson" is from Catalan fill = "son" and classical Latin formula is from forma = "form"). Some dictionaries report the name bonito may be a Spanish-ization of بينيث baynīth which is a sea fish in medieval Arabic general dictionaries (including Lisan al-Arab); others report the name's origin is unknown or may be from Spanish bonito = "pretty good".
Jump up^ Varan @ CNRTL.fr (in French).
Jump up^ The following book published in 1669 consists of a text in Arabic by Al-Farghani (aka Alfraganus), plus a translation of the text into Latin by Jacobus Golius, plus notes by the translator. The Arabic page with the term "samt al-rā's" is here and the translator has a note about it in Latin here. The translator notes that the term was used by Arabic writers in two ways, (1) the top path (which is a direction; vertically up) and (2) the top of a path (which is a point).
^ Jump up to:^a ^b Al-Battani's Kitāb Al-Zīj was translated to Latin around 1140. The translator was Plato Tiburtinus. In the translation, Al-Battani's Arabic samt al-rā's = "top path" was written down in Latin as zenith capitis and zenith capitum. The Latin capitis | capitum = "head (or top)" is a straight translation of Arabic rā's = "head (or top)". Today's etymology dictionaries are unanimous that the Latin zenith was a mangling of Arabic samt = "direction (or path)". In the same book translated by Plato Tiburtinus, Arabic سمت مطلع samt motalaa = "direction to the rising sun" was translated as Latin zenith ascensionis (chapter 7); قد تعرف السمت qad taarif al-samt = "the direction can be made known by" was translated as zenith sciri potest (chapter 11); سمت الجنوب samt al-janoub = "southern direction" was translated as zenith meridianum (chapter 12) (where medieval Latin meridianus meant "southern" and "midday"). In other words, for Plato Tiburtinus zenith meant "direction" and did not mean "zenith". But the direction that was used the most was the samt al-rā's = zenith capitis = "zenithal direction; vertically up". The phrase zenith capitis or zenith capitum meaning "zenith" occurs in medieval Latin in Johannes de Sacrobosco (died circa 1245) (ref), Roger Bacon (died 1294) (ref), Albertus Magnus (died 1280)(ref), and others. Later writers dropped the capitis and used zenith alone to mean the zenith capitis. Refs: zenith at CNRTL.fr; zenith in Brill's Encyclopaedia of Islam, 1st Edition; zenith capitis and zenith capitum in Plato Tiburtinus in Latin; سمت الرأس samt al-ra's in Al-Battani's book in Arabic.
Jump up^ The Introduction and Spread of the Hindu-Arabic Numerals, by Smith and Karpinski, year 1911, page 59: Online.
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.
Jump up^ Details at English Words That Are Of Arabic Etymological Ancestry, Note #187.
Jump up^ The Materia Medica of Dioscorides is downloadable from links on the Wikipedia Dioscorides page. Trux meaning "tartar" is in Dioscorides' Book 5 section 132, where Dioscorides briefly describes how to make it and how to use it in medicine.
Jump up^ Dictionnaire Étymologique Des Mots Français D'Origine Orientale, by L. Marcel Devic, year 1876.
Jump up^ Reported in An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, by Walter W. Skeat, year 1888. Downloadable.
Jump up^ An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English (year 1921), by Ernest Weekley.
Jump up^ Harper, Douglas. "tobacco". Online Etymology Dictionary. The same is reported by Diccionario RAE and Diccionari.cat. Cf Medieval Arabic طبّاق @ Baheth.info. A number of reports in Spanish in the 16th century clearly say the word tabaco is indigenous to the West Indies – CNRTL.fr. According to the same and other reports at the time, there were a number of indigenous names for tobacco in the West Indies and tabaco was not one of those names strictly speaking, and the reporters are in conflict about what the indigenous name tabaco meant, and they are writing after tobaco had already been established in Spanish in the New World – NED.
Jump up^ "Traffic" in NED (1926).
Jump up^ Ibn al-Baitar (died 1248) used word zarqūn for red lead or cinnabar, which are red-coloured minerals chemically different from zircon. The derived Spanish azarcon and Portuguese zarcão had the sense of a specifically red-colored mineral, typically red lead or cinnabar – Dozy year 1869 page 225. This is thought by some to be the source-word for the not-at-all-red zircon gemstone Jargoon, which in turn is thought by some to be the source-word for zircon; dictionaries expressing support for this idea include Yule & Burnell, Weekley, Webster's New World Dictionary (2010), Collins English Dictionary, NED: zircon, NED: jargoon, Klein. Today's English word zircon certainly came from 18th-century German Zirkon. Available evidence that Zirkon came from jargon (the zircon gemstone) is incomplete, and evidence that jargon came from zarqūn is completely missing. Dictionaries not supporting the idea that Zirkon descends from Arabic include Concise OED, Merriam-Webster, Random House, CNRTL.fr (in French), Raja Tazi (in German). According to Diccionario RAE, Zirkon came from Spanish circón which came from Arabic zarqūn and there is no role for jargon in the etymology. According to American Heritage Dictionary, Zirkon came from Arabic siriqun, a different word, without a Spanish connection.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b References for the medieval Arabic sources and medieval Latin borrowings of those plant names are as follows. Ones marked "(F)" go to the French dictionary atCentre National de Ressources Textuelles et Lexicales, ones marked "(R)" go to Random House Dictionary, and other references are identified with terse labels:Berberis(R), انبرباريس anbarbārīs = Berberis(Ibn Sina), امبرباريس ambarbārīs = Berberis(Ibn Al-Baitar), الأمبرباريس al-ambarbārīs is also called البرباريس al-barbārīs(Fairuzabadi's dictionary), Galen uses name "Oxyacantha" for Berberis(John Gerarde), Arabic amiberberis = Latin Berberis(Matthaeus Silvaticus),Berberis is frequent in Constantinus Africanus (Constantinus Africanus was the introducer of plantname Berberis into medieval Latin), Berberis(Raja Tazi 1998),Barberry(Skeat 1888);; Cakile(Henri Lammens 1890), Cakile(Pierre Guigues 1905), Kakile Serapionis(John Gerarde 1597), Chakile(Serapion the Younger, medieval Latin);; for Carthamus see Carthamin;; Cuscute(F), Cuscuta(Helmut Genaust), spelled كشوث kushūth in Ibn al-Baitar;; Doronicum(F), Doronicum(R), spelled درونج dorūnaj in Ibn al-Baitar;; Garingal & Galanga(F), Galingale & Galanga(NED);; Musa(Devic), Musa(Alphita), موز mauz(Ibn al-Baitar), Muse #4 and Musa(NED);; Nuphar (nénuphar)(F), Nuphar (nenufar)(NED), Nénuphar(Lammens);; Ribes(F), Ribès(Pierre Guigues 1903 in preface to translation of Najm al-Din Mahmud (died 1330)), Ribes(Lammens 1890), the meaning of late medieval Latin ribes was Rheum ribes – e.g. e.g. – and the medieval Arabic ريباس rībāshad the very same meaning – e.g. ;; Senna(F), Senna(R), Séné(Lammens), Sene in Alphita, السنى al-sanā and السني al-senī in Ibn al-Baitar;;Taraxacum(Skeat), Ataraxacon(Alphita), Taraxacum(R);; Usnea(F), Usnea(R), Usnee(Simon of Genoa), Usnée(Lammens);; alkekengi(F),alkekengi(R);; azedarach(F), azedarach(Garland Cannon), azadarach + azedarach(Matthaeus Silvaticus anno 1317), Azadirachta(Helmut Genaust);;bellerica(Yule), bellerica(Devic), beliligi = belirici = bellerici(Simon of Genoa), بليلج belīlej in Ibn al-Baitar;; chebula(Yule), kebulus = chebulae(Alphita),chébule(Devic);; cheiranthe(Devic), keiri(NED), خيري kheīrī(Ibn al-Awwam);; cubeba(F), cubeba(R);; emblic(Yule), emblic(Devic), emblic(Serapion the Younger);; harmala(Tazi), harmale(Devic), harmala(other);; (Salsola) kali(F), kali = a marine littoral plant, an Arabic name(Simon of Genoa year 1292 in Latin, also in Matthaeus Silvaticus);; mahaleb(F), mahaleb(Ibn al-Awwam), mahaleb(Matthaeus Silvaticus year 1317);; mathil->metel(other), metel(Devic), nux methel(Serapion the Younger), metel(other);; mezereum(R), mézéréon(Devic), mezereon(Alphita: see editor's footnote quoting Matthaeus Silvaticus and John Gerarde), spelled مازريون māzarīūn in Ibn Sina and Ibn al-Baitar;; sambac(Devic), zambacca(synonyms of Petrus de Abano, died c. 1316), sambacus(Simon of Genoa), زنبق = دهن الياسمين(zanbaq in Lisan al-Arab);; sebesten(other), sebesten(Devic), sebesten(Alphita) (sebesten in late medieval Latin referred to Cordia myxa, not Cordia sebestena, and the medieval Arabic سبستان sebestān was Cordia myxa);; turpeth(F), turpeth(R);; zedoaria(F), zedoaria(R);; zérumbet(F), zerumbet is from medieval Latin zurumbet | zurumbeth | zerumbet | zirumbet which is from Arabic زرنباد zurunbād | zarunbād which medievally in Latin and Arabic meant Curcuma zedoaria. The great majority of the above plant names can be seen in Latin in the late-13th-century medical-botany dictionary Synonyma Medicinae by Simon of Genoa (online) and in the mid-15th-century medical-botany dictionary called the Alphita (online); and the few that are not in either of those two Latin dictionaries may be seen in Latin in the book on medicaments by Serapion the Younger circa 1300 (online). None of the names are found in Latin in early medieval or classsical Latin botany or medicine books. The Arabic predecessors of the great majority of the above plant names can be seen in Arabic as entries in Part Two of Ibn Sina's The Canon of Medicine, dated early 11th century, which became a widely circulated book in Latin in the 13th and 14th centuries: an Arabic copy is atDDC.AUB.edu.lb. All of the Arabic predecessor plant-names without exception, and usually with better descriptions of the plants (compared to Ibn Sina's descriptions), are in Ibn al-Baitar's Book of Simple Medicaments and Foods, dated early 13th century, which was not translated to Latin in the medieval era but has since been published in German, French, and Arabic – Arabic copies are at Al-Mostafa.com and AlWaraq.net.
Jump up^ "Les Noms Arabes Dans Sérapion, Liber de Simplici Medicina", by Pierre Guigues, published in 1905 in Journal Asiatique, Series X, tome V, pages 473–546, continued in tome VI, pages 49–112.
Jump up^ Analysis of herbal medicine plant-names by Martin Levey reported by him in "Chapter III: Botanonymy" in his 1973 book Early Arabic Pharmacology: An Introduction.
Jump up^ Each discussed in Etymologisches Wörterbuch der botanischen Pflanzennamen, by Helmut Genaust, year 1996. Another Arabic botanical name introduced by Prospero Alpini from Egypt was Sesban meaning Sesbania sesban from synonymous Arabic سيسبان saīsabān | saīsbān (Helmut Genaust 1996; Lammens 1890; Ibn al-Baitar). The Latin botantical Abrus is the parent of the chemical name Abrin; see abrine @ CNRTL.fr. The Arabic لبلاب lablāb means any kind of climbing and twisting plant. The Latin and English Lablab is a certain vigorously climbing and twisting bean plant. Prospero Alpini called the plant in Latin phaseolus niger lablab = "lablab black bean". Prospero Alpini published his De Plantis Aegypti in 1592. It was republished in 1640 with supplements by other botanists – De Plantis Aegypti, 1640. De Plantis Exoticis by Prospero Alpini (died 1617) was published in 1639 – ref.
Jump up^ A list of 43 of Forsskål's Latinized Arabic fish names is at Baheyeldin.com/linguistics. Forsskål was a student of Arabic language as well as of taxonomy. His published journals contain the underlying Arabic names as well as his Latinizations of them (downloadable from links at the Wikipedia Peter Forsskål page).
Jump up^ Most of those miscellaneous botanical names are discussed in Etymologisches Wörterbuch der botanischen Pflanzennamen, by Helmut Genaust, year 1996. About half of them are in Dictionnaire Étymologique Des Mots Français D'Origine Orientale, by L. Marcel Devic, year 1876. The following are supplemental notes. The names argel and seyal were introduced to scientific botany nomenclature from الحرجل harjel and سيال seyāl in the early 19th century by the botanist Delile, who had visited North Africa. Retama comes from an old Spanish name for broom bushes and the Spanish name is from medieval Arabic رتم ratam with the same meaning –ref, ref. Acerola is from tropical New World Spanish acerola = "acerola cherry" which is from medieval Spanish and Portuguese acerola | azerola | azarola = "azarole hawthorn" which is from medieval Arabic الزعرور al-zoʿrūr = "azarole hawthorn" – ref, ref. Alchimilla appears in 16th century Europe with the same core meaning as today's Alchemilla (e.g.). Reporters on Alchemilla agree it is from Arabic although they do not agree on how.
Jump up^ In late medieval English, chamelet | chamlet was a costly fabric and was typically an import from the Near East – MED, NED. Today spelled "camlet", it is synonymous with French camelot which the French CNRTL.fr says is "from Arabic khamlāt, plural of khamla, meaning plush woollen cloth.... The stuff was made in the Orient and introduced to the Occident at the same time as the word." The historian Wilhelm Heyd (1886) says: "The [medieval] Arabic khamla meant cloth with a long nap, cloth with a lot of plush. This is the common character of all the camlets [of late medieval commerce]. They could be made from diverse materials.... Some were made from fine goat hair." – Histoire du commerce du Levant au moyen-âge, Volume 2 pages 703-705, by W. Heyd, year 1886. The medieval Arabic word was also in the form khamīla. Definitions of خملة khamla | خميلة khamīla taken from some medieval Arabic dictionaries are in Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon page 813.
Jump up^ The English name morocco meaning a type of leather is a refreshed spelling of early 16th century English maroquin, from 15th century French maroquin meaning a soft flexible leather from the country of Morocco. In later centuries the name morocco designated a soft flexible leather made in any country. Maroquin @ NED,morocco @ NED, maroquin @ CNRTL.fr.
Jump up^ Fustic in the late medieval centuries was a dye from the wood of a Mediterranean tree. After the discovery of America, a better, more durable dye from a tree wood was found, and given the same name. The late medieval fustic came from the Rhus cotinus tree. "Rhus cotinus wood was treated in warm [or boiling] water; a yellow infusion was obtained which on contact with air turned into brown; with acids it becomes greenish yellow and with alkalies orange; in combination with iron salts, especially with ferrous sulphate a greenish-black was produced." – The Art of Dyeing in the History of Mankind, by Franco Brunello, year 1973 page 382. The earliest record of the word as a dye in the Western languages is in 13th-century Spanish as "fustet", followed by 14th-century French as "fustet" and "fustel" – CNRTL.fr,DMF, Lexilogos. Medieval Spanish had the somewhat phonetically similar alfóstigo = "pistachio", which was from Arabic al-fustuq = "the pistachio". Medieval Arabic additionally had fustuqī = "the yellow-green color of the pistachio nut" (e.g.), (e.g.). The use of the word as a dye in medieval Arabic is not recorded under the entry for fustuq in the 1997 book A Dictionary of Andalusi Arabic nor under the entries for fustuq in the medieval Arabic dictionaries – Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon, page 2395, Baheth.info. This suggests that the use of the word as a dye may have started in Spanish. From a phonetic view the medieval Spanish and French fustet is a diminutive of the medieval Spanish and French fuste = "boards of wood, timber", which was from classical Latin fustis = "wooden stick" – DRAE,Lexilogos.com, Du Cange. The semantic transformation from "pistachio" to "fustic dye" is poorly understood, assuming it happened. New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (year 1901) says "the name was transferred from the pistachio [tree] to the closely allied Rhus cotinus". But the two trees are not closely allied.
Jump up^ "Carthamin" and "Carthamus" in New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (year 1893). Similarly summarized in CNRTL.fr (French) and Diccionario RAE(Spanish). Also in Origin of Cultivated Plants by Alphonse de Candolle (year 1885). For the word in medieval Arabic see قرطم @ Baheth.info (see also عصفرʿusfur), قرطم @ Ibn al-Awwam and قرطم @ Ibn al-Baitar.
Jump up^ The Latin anatomy term dura mater has its earliest record in Latin in the medical writer Constantinus Africanus (died c. 1087). Constantinus Africanus has a 4-page chapter entitled "the composition of the membranes situated on the interior of the skull" (it is in Latin at Ref, and a variant Latin edition is downloadable at Ref). This was the place of birth of the term dura mater in Latin anatomy. Constantinus was fluent in Arabic and most of his overall content was taken from Arabic sources. For his material on dura mater, Constantinus's source was Ali Ibn Al-Abbas Al-Majusi, aka Haly Abbas (died c. 990). Details about how dura mater arose as an Arabic loan-translation are on pages 95-96 (including footnote #27) of the article "Constantine's pseudo-Classical terminology and its survival", by Gotthard Strohmaier in the bookConstantine the African and ʻAlī Ibn Al-ʻAbbās Al-Maǧūsī: The Pantegni and Related Texts, year 1994. Constantinus's chapter with the term dura mater also contains the first known use of the term pia mater, which for Constantinus had the same meaning as it has today (i.e. a certain membrane lying between the brain and the skull), and this too was a loan-translation from Arabic – the term was al-umm al-raqīqa = "thin mother" in Ali Ibn Al-Abbas. Cf pia mater @ NED , pia mater @ CNRTL.fr. Early adopters of the names dura mater and pia mater include William of Conches (died c. 1154) and Roger Frugard (died c. 1195), both of whom took lots of material from Constantinus. As noted by Strohmaier (1994), the classical Greek medical writer Galen (died c. 200 AD) was acquainted with the dura mater and the pia mater, which he called in Greek sklera meninx (literally "hard membrane") and lepte meninx (literally "thin membrane"), also spelled μῆνιγξ. For the medieval Arabic writers on medicine including Ali Ibn Al-Abbas, the writings of Galen were the most quoted and requoted antecedent source for their knowledge of anatomy. For the early medieval Latins, the writings of Galen were mostly unknown and not in circulation – although a smallish subset was in circulation. The later medieval Latins were introduced to new Galen texts from Arabic sources in the 12th century. Subsequently the Latins found Galen in Late Byzantine sources.
Jump up^ Webster's (1913), Dictionary.Reference.com (2010), sinus#2 @ CNRTL.fr, and many others. Cf medieval جيب jayb in Lane's Lexicon page 492.

General references[edit]

Centre National de Ressources Textuelles et Lexicales – well-referenced etymologies in French language
Arabismen im Deutschen: lexikalische Transferenzen vom Arabischen ins Deutsche, by Raja Tazi (year 1998). – 400-page book about the German words of Arabic ancestry. Mostly the same words that are seen in English. German got the words mostly from French and Latin, and thirdly from other European languages.
Baheth.info – searchable copies of large medieval Arabic dictionaries, including the dictionaries by Ibn Manzur, Fairuzabadi, and Al-Jawhari
Richardson's Persian-Arabic–English Dictionary, year 1852 Edition – 1400 pages; downloadable
Middle English Dictionary – biggest and best for late medieval English, fully searchable online
Online Etymology Dictionary – compiled by Douglas Harper – Online Etymology Dictionary
Dictionary.Reference.com – has the online copy of Random House Dictionary
CollinsDictionary.com – online copy of Collins English Dictionary
Concise OED – online copy of Concise Oxford English Dictionary
TheFreeDictionary.com – has online copy of American Heritage Dictionary
Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary – online copy of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary
An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English (year 1921), by Ernest Weekley – downloadable, 850 pages, a good compilation of short summary etymologies
An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language (year 1888), by Walter W. Skeat – sometimes found incorrect by later research but usually not

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