•
List of English words of Arabic origin (A–B) •
List of English words of Arabic origin (C-F) •
List of English words of Arabic origin (G-J) •
List of English words of Arabic origin (K-M) •
List of English words of Arabic origin (N-S) •
List of English words of Arabic origin (T-Z) •
List of English words of Arabic origin: Addenda for certain specialist vocabularies A ;
admiral : أمير
amīr (), military commander, also Emir.
Amīr is common in medieval Arabic as a commander on land (not sea). In medieval Latin it has lots records as a specifically Muslim military leader or
emir. A Latin record of a different kind comes from Sicily in 1072, the year
the Latins defeated the Arabs in Sicily at the capital city Palermo. In that year, after about 300 years of Arabic rule in Sicily, a new military governing official at Palermo was assigned as "Knight, to be for the Sicilians the
amiratus", where
-atus is a Latin grammar suffix. This title continued in mainly non-marine use over the next century among the Latins at Palermo, usually spelled
am[m]iratus;
ammiral year 1112 influenced by Latin suffix
-alis. In 1178 (and earlier) the person holding the title
amiratus at Palermo was put in charge of the navy of the
Kingdom of Sicily. After that start, the use of the word to mean an Admiral of the Sea was taken up in the
maritime republic of Genoa starting in 1195 as
amirato, and spread throughout the Latin Mediterranean in the 13th century. The insertion of the letter 'd' was undoubtedly influenced by allusion to the word admire, a classical Latin word. ;
adobe : الطوب
al-tūb | at-tūb (), the brick. The word is in a number of medieval Arabic dictionaries meaning "brick". The Arabic dictionary of Al-Jawhari dated about year 1000 made the comment that the Arabic word had come from the
Coptic language of Egypt. In European languages the early records are in medieval Spanish spelled
adoba | adova and
adobe with the same meaning as today's Spanish
adobe, "sun-dried brick". Other cases of Arabic 't' becoming medieval Spanish 'd' include
:es:Ajedrez, :es:Algodón, :es:Badana, :es:Badea. The word entered English from Mexico in the 18th and 19th centuries. ;
afrit : عفريت
ʿifrīt (), an ancient demon popularized by the
1001 Arabian Nights tales. The word is also used in the Quran in chapter 27 verse 39. It refers to a type of jinn. ;
albatross : The medieval Arabic source-word was probably الغطّاس
al-ghattās () which literally meant "the diver", and meant birds who caught fish by diving, and sometimes meant the diving waterbirds of the
pelecaniform class, including cormorants. From this or some other Arabic word, late medieval Spanish has
alcatraz meaning pelecaniform-type large diving seabird. The albatrosses are large diving seabirds that are only found in the Southern Hemisphere and the Pacific Ocean regions. Beginning in the 17th century, every European language adopted "albatros" with a 'b' for these birds, the 'b' having been mobilized from Latinate
alba = "white". ;
alchemy,
chemistry : الكيمياء
al-kīmīāʾ (), alchemy and medieval chemistry, and especially "studies about substances through which the generation of gold and silver may be artificially accomplished". In Arabic the word had its origin in a Greek alchemy word that had been in use in the early centuries AD in Alexandria in Egypt in Greek. The Arabic word entered Latin as
alchimia in the 12th century and was widely circulating in Latin in the 13th century. In medieval Latin
alchimia was strongly associated with the quest to make gold out of other metals but the scope of the word also covered the full range of what was then known about chemistry and metallurgy. Late medieval Latin had the word-forms
alchimicus = "alchemical" and
alchimista = "alchemist". By deletion of
al-, those word-forms gave rise to the Latin word-forms
chimia,
chimicus and
chimista beginning in the mid 16th century. The word-forms with and without the
al- were synonymous until the end of the 17th century; the meaning of each of them covered both alchemy and chemistry. ;
alcohol: الكحول
al-Kuḥull (), very finely powdered
stibnite (Sb2S3) or
galena (PbS) or any similar fine powder. In various cases the powder was obtained by crushing, but in various other cases the powder was obtained by
calcination or by
sublimation & deposition. In the alchemy and medicine writer
Theophrastus Paracelsus (died 1541), the
alcohol powders produced by sublimation & deposition were viewed as kinds of distillates, and with that mindset he extended the word's meaning to distillate of wine. "Alcohol of wine" (
ethanol) has its first known record in Paracelsus. The biggest-selling English dictionary of the 18th century (
Bailey's) defined alcohol as "a very fine and impalpable powder, or a very pure well rectified spirit." ;
alcove : القُبَّة
al-qobba (), vault, dome or
cupola. That sense for the word is in medieval Arabic dictionaries.
Alcoba begot French
alcove, earliest known record 1646, and French begot English. ;
alembic (distillation apparatus) : الإنبيق
al-anbīq (), "the still" (for distilling). The Arabic root is traceable to Greek
ambix = "cup". The earliest chemical distillations were by Greeks in Alexandria in Egypt in about the 3rd century AD. Their
ambix became the 9th-century Arabic
al-anbīq, which became the 12th-century Latin
alembicus. ;
alfalfa : الفصفصة
al-fisfisa (, alfalfa. The Arabic entered medieval Spanish. ;
algebra : الجبر
al-jabr (), completing, or restoring broken parts. The word's mathematical use has its earliest record in Arabic in the title of the book
"al-mukhtaṣar fī ḥisāb al-jabr wa al-muqābala", translatable as "
The Compendium on Calculation by Restoring and Balancing", by the 9th-century mathematician Mohammed Ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi. This algebra book was translated to Latin twice in the 12th century. In medieval Arabic mathematics,
al-jabr and
al-muqābala were the names of the two main preparatory steps used to solve an
algebraic equation and the phrase "
al-jabr and
al-muqābala" came to mean "method of equation-solving". The medieval Latins borrowed the method and the names. ;
alidade: العضادة
al-ʿiḍāda () (from
ʿiḍad, pivoting arm), the rotary dial for angular positioning on the Astrolabe surveying instrument used in astronomy. The word with that meaning was used by, e.g., the astronomers
Abū al-Wafā' Būzjānī (died 998) and
Abu al-Salt (died 1134). The word with the same meaning entered Latin in the later Middle Ages in the context of
Astrolabes. Crossref
azimuth, which entered the European languages on the same pathway. ;
alkali : القلي
al-qalī | al-qilī () or قلويِّ | Qoulawi (), an alkaline material derived from the ashes of plants, specifically plants that grew on salty soils –
glassworts aka
saltworts. The dictionary of Al-Jawhari (died c. 1003) said "
al-qilī is obtained from glassworts". The Arabs used it as an ingredient in making ink, glass and making soap. The word's early records in the West are in Latin alchemy texts in and around the early 13th century, with the same meaning as the Arabic. ;
ambergris and possibly
amber: عنبر
ʿambar (), meaning ambergris, i.e. a waxy material produced in the stomach of sperm whales and used historically for perfumery. From Arabic sellers of ambergris, the word passed into the Western languages in the mid-medieval centuries as
ambra with the same meaning as the Arabic. In the late medieval centuries the Western word took on the additional meaning of amber, from causes not understood. The two meanings – ambergris and amber – then co-existed for more than four centuries. "Ambergris" was coined to eliminate the ambiguity (the color of ambergris is grey more often than not, and
gris is French for grey). It wasn't until about 1700 that the ambergris meaning died out in English amber. ;
anil,
aniline,
polyaniline : نيلة
nīlah (), Indigo dye was uncommon throughout Europe until the 16th century;
history of indigo dye. In English anil is a natural indigo dye or the tropical American plant it is obtained from. Aniline is a technical word in dye chemistry dating from mid-19th-century Europe. ;
apricot: البرقوق
al-barqūq (), apricot. Arabic is in turn traceable back to Early Byzantine Greek and thence to classical Latin
praecoqua, literally "precocious" and specifically precociously ripening peaches, i.e. apricots. Early spellings in English included abrecok (year 1551), abrecox (1578), apricock (1593), each meaning apricot. The letter 't' in today's English apricot has come from French. In French it starts around the 1520s as
abricot and
aubercot meaning apricot. ;
arsenal : دار صناعة
dār sināʿa, literally "house of manufacturing" but in practice in medieval Arabic it meant government-run manufacturing, usually for the military, most notably for the navy. In the
Italian maritime republics in the 12th century the word was adopted to designate a
naval dockyard, a place for building ships and military armaments for ships, and repairing armed ships. In the later-medieval centuries the biggest such arsenal in Europe was the
Arsenal of Venice. 12th-century Italian-Latin has the spellings
darsena,
arsena and
tarsanatus. In 14th-century Italian and Italian-Latin the spellings included
terzana, arzana, arsana, arcenatus, tersanaia, terzinaia, darsena, and 15th-century
tarcenale, all meaning a shipyard and in only some cases having naval building activity. In 16th-century French and English an
arsenal was either a naval dockyard or an arsenal, or both. In today's French
arsenal continues to have the same dual meanings as in the 16th century. ;
artichoke : الخرشف
al-kharshuf () | الخرشوف
al-kharshūf, artichoke. The word with that meaning has records in medieval Andalusi and
Maghrebi Arabic, including at around year 1100. With the same meaning, Spanish
alcachofa (circa 1400), Spanish
carchofa (1423), Spanish
alcarchofa (1423), but the etymology dictionaries unanimously say these have to be mutations of the Spanish and Italian word. ;
assassin : الحشاشين
al-Ḥashshāshīn () literally '
hashish-eaters', an Arabic nickname, probably originally derogatory, for the
Nizari Ismaili religious sect in the
Levant during the
Crusades era, with reference to the supposedly erratic behaviour of the members of the sect, as if they were intoxicated by hashish. This sect carried out assassinations against chiefs of other sects, including Crusading Christians, and the story circulated throughout Western Europe at the time (13th century and late 12th). Medievally in Latin & Italian & French, the sect was called the
Assissini | Assassini. Medievally in Arabic texts the wordform is
al-hashīshīya, The generalization of the sect's nickname to the meaning of any sort of assassin happened in Italian at the start of the 14th century. The word with the generalized meaning was often used in Italian in the 14th and 15th centuries. In the mid 16th century the Italian word entered French, ;
attar (of roses): عطر
ʿitr (), perfume, aroma. The English word came from the Hindi/Urdu-speaking area of
northeast India in the late 18th century and its source was the Hindi/Urdu
atr | itr = "perfume", which had come from the Persian
ʿitr = "perfume", and the Persian had come medievally from the Arabic
ʿitr. ;
aubergine : الباذنجان
al-bāzinjān (), aubergine. The plant is native to India. It was unknown to the ancient Greeks and Romans. It was introduced to the Mediterranean region by the medieval Arabs. The Arabic name entered Iberian Romance languages late medievally, producing late medieval Spanish
alberengena = "aubergine" and Catalan
alberginia = "aubergine". The Catalan was the parent of the French
aubergine, which starts in the mid-18th century and which embodies a change from al- to au- that happened in French. ;
average : عُوَار
ʿawār (), a defect, or anything defective or damaged, including partially spoiled merchandise; and عواري
ʿawārī (also عوارة
ʿawāra) = "of or relating to
ʿawār, a state of partial damage". Within the Western languages the word's history begins in medieval sea-commerce on the Mediterranean. 12th and 13th century Genoa Latin
avaria meant "damage, loss and non-normal expenses arising in connection with a merchant sea voyage"; and the same meaning for
avaria is in Marseille in 1210, Barcelona in 1258 and Florence in the late 13th. ;
azimuth : السمت
Alssamt|ssamt (), In the mid 13th century in Spanish,
açumut | açumuth is in a set of astronomy books that took heavily from Arabic sources and again Astrolabes is the context of use. The earliest in English is in the 1390s in
Geoffrey Chaucer's
Treatise on the Astrolabe, which used the word about a dozen times. ;
azure (colour),
lazurite (mineral),
azurite (mineral),
lazulite (mineral) : لازورد
lāzward | lāzūard (), lazurite and
lapis lazuli, a rock with a vivid blue colour, and this rock was crushed to a powder for use as a blue colourant in inks, paints, eye-makeup, etc. The word is ultimately from the place-name of a large deposit of azure-blue rock in northeastern Afghanistan ("Lajward"), which was the chief and probably the only source-place for the most-desired type of azure-blue rock in the medieval era – the type called Lazurite today. Medievally the word was also used for other types of azure-blue rock that were less costly, especially the type called Azurite today. Latin had
azurium and
lazurium for the rocks, with records starting in the 9th century. From the powdered rocks, azure was a color-name in all the later-medieval Western languages. Today's Russian, Ukrainian and Polish have the colour-name spelled with the letter 'L' (лазурь, lazur).
B ;
benzoin,
benzene,
benzoic acid : لبان جاوي
lubān jāwī, () benzoin resin, literally "
frankincense of Java". Benzoin is a natural resin from an Indonesian tree. Arab sea-merchants shipped it to the Middle East for sale as perfumery and incense in the later medieval centuries. It first came to Europe in the early 15th century. The European name
benzoin is a great mutation of the Arabic name
lubān jāwī and the linguistic factors that caused the mutation are well understood. Among European chemists, benzoin resin was the original source for benzoic acid, which when
decaboxylated gives
benzene ;
bezoar: بازهر
bāzahr (), and بادزهر
bādzahr (from Persian
pâdzahr), a type of hard
bolus, containing calcium compounds, sometimes formed in the stomachs of goats (and other ruminants). Today in English a bezoar is a medical and veterinary term for a ball of indigestible material that collects in the stomach and fails to pass through the intestines. Goat bezoars were recommended by medieval Arabic medical writers for use as antidotes to poisons, particularly arsenic poisons. That is how the word first entered medieval Latin medical vocabulary. ;
borax,
borate,
boron : بورق
būraq (), various salts, including borax. Borax (i.e., sodium borate) was in use medievally primarily as a
fluxing agent in soldering gold, silver and metal ornaments. The ancient Greeks and Romans used fluxing agents in metalworking, but borax was unknown to them. In medieval Europe there was no borax except as an import from Arabian lands. The Arabs imported at least part of it from India. From Arabic
būraq, Latin adopted the name
borax | baurach in the 12th century In medieval Arabic the usual name for borax was تنكار
tinkār. This name was adopted by the medieval Latins starting in the 12th century as
tincar | atincar with the same meaning. Today's
Tincalconite, which is a mineral variant of borax, is descended from the medieval Latin
tincar = "borax", conjoined with ancient Greek
konis = "powder" plus the conventional suffix -ite. "Boron" and "borate" descend from "borax". Bouquet: باقة
Addendum for words that may or may not be of Arabic ancestry ;
alizarin: Alizarin is a red dye with considerable commercial usage. The word's first records are in the early 19th century in France as
alizari. The origin and early history of the French word is obscure. Questionably, it may have come from the Arabic العصارة
al-ʿasāra = "the juice" (from Arabic root
ʿasar = "to squeeze"). A majority of today's dictionaries endorse the
al-ʿasāra idea, while a minority say the connection with
al-ʿasāra is improbable. ;
almanac : This word's earliest securely dated record in the West is in Latin in 1267. A very small number of possibly a little earlier records exist but come with insecure dates. In its early records in Latin it was spelled
almanac and it meant a set of tables detailing movements of astronomical bodies. Namely the movements of the five then-known planets and the moon and the sun. A lot of medieval Arabic writings on astronomy exist, and they don't use a word that can be matched to the Latin
almanac. One of the words they do use is "
zīj" and another is "
taqwīm". The 19th-century Arabic-word-origin experts Engelmann & Dozy said about almanac: "To have the right to argue that it is of Arabic origin, one must first find a candidate word in Arabic" and they found none. ;
amalgam, amalgamate: This word is first seen in European languages in 13th and 14th century Latin alchemy texts, where it meant an amalgam of mercury with another metal, and it was spelled
amalgama. It lacks a plausible origin in terms of Latin precedents. In medieval Arabic records the word الملغم
al-malgham | الملغمة
al-malghama meaning "amalgam" is uncommon, but does exist and was used by a number of different Arabic writers. Today some English dictionaries say the Latin was from this Arabic, or probably was. But other dictionaries are unconvinced, and say the origin of the Latin is obscure. ;
antimony : This word's first known record is in
Constantinus Africanus (died circa 1087), who was a widely circulated medical author in later-medieval Latin (crossref
borage). His spelling was "antimonium". ;
borage (plant),
Boraginaceae (botanical family) :The borage plant is native to the Mediterranean area. It was known to the ancient Greeks and Romans under other names. The name
borage is from medieval Latin
borago | borrago | borragine. The name is first seen in
Constantinus Africanus, an 11th-century Latin medical writer and translator whose native language was Arabic and who drew from Arabic medical sources. Many of today's etymology dictionaries suppose the name to be from Arabic and report the proposition that Constantinus took it from أبو عرق
abū ʿaraq = "sweat inducer", because borage leaves supposedly had a sweat-inducing effect and the word would be pronounced
būaraq in Arabic. ==Footnotes==