English words from Arabic
A surprising share of the vocabulary of mathematics, chemistry and trade reached English from Arabic, often through medieval Latin and Spanish. The giveaway is often the "al-" at the front, the Arabic word for "the".
- Alchemy
Alchemy, the medieval forerunner of chemistry devoted to (unsuccessfully) turning lead into gold, reached English through Arabic al-kīmiyā. Where Arabic got it is where things get genuinely uncertain: one long-standing theory holds that it traces back to…
From the Sat, Aug 22, 2026 roundup → - Algebra
Around 820 AD, the Persian mathematician al-Khwarizmi wrote a treatise in Baghdad whose title included the Arabic word "al-jabr," meaning "the reunion of broken parts," his term for moving a subtracted quantity to the other side of an equation to restore…
From the Wed, Sep 16, 2026 roundup → - Algorithm
Algorithm traces to the Latinized name of Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, a 9th-century Persian scholar working in Baghdad's House of Wisdom. His book on solving equations, whose title contributed the word "algebra," was translated into Latin in the 12th…
From the Mon, Aug 10, 2026 roundup → - Apricot
The Romans called it "praecoquum," early-ripening, because it fruited before the peach. Greek borrowed that, Arabic borrowed the Greek as "al-barquq," Spanish and Portuguese borrowed the Arabic, and English got "abrecock" in the 1550s. The modern spelling…
From the Wed, Sep 30, 2026 roundup → - Assassin
Assassin comes from hashishiyy, an Arabic nickname applied to the Nizari Ismailis, a sect active during the Crusades under the "Old Man of the Mountain," Hasan-i Sabbah. European Crusaders believed the name referred to hashish use before politically motivated…
From the Sat, Aug 8, 2026 roundup → - Candy
Trace candy back far enough and you land in Sanskrit: khanda, "a piece of sugar," rooted in a verb meaning "to break into pieces." That became Persian qand, then Arabic qandi, then Old French sucre candi, before English clipped it down to just "candy" — a…
From the Sat, Aug 8, 2026 roundup → - Checkmate
"Checkmate" comes from the Persian "shah mat," and nearly every chess book will tell you it means "the king is dead." Etymologists mostly disagree. In Persian, "mat" means helpless, defeated, or at a loss, so the phrase is closer to "the king is stuck." The…
From the Wed, Sep 16, 2026 roundup → - Elixir
An "elixir" — especially the mythical kind said to cure any illness or grant eternal life — comes from Arabic al-iksīr, which alchemists borrowed in turn from a Greek word, xērion, for a dry medicinal powder used to treat wounds. The word traveled through…
From the Sun, Aug 23, 2026 roundup → - Hazard
"Hazard" traces back to an Arabic word for a die — az-zahr — by way of a medieval European dice game reportedly picked up during the Crusades. The game itself was notorious for wrecking fortunes on a single unlucky roll, which is presumably how the word ended…
From the Fri, Aug 28, 2026 roundup → - Loofah
Despite the texture, a "loofah" isn't a sea creature at all — it's the dried, fibrous interior of a gourd in the cucumber family, left over once the outer skin and flesh are stripped away. The English name comes almost unchanged from the Egyptian Arabic word…
From the Mon, Aug 31, 2026 roundup → - Monsoon
Arab sailors called the season when the Indian Ocean's winds reversed by the plain word for "season," "mawsim." Portuguese navigators who arrived in the 1500s heard it as "monção," and English took it from them as "monsoon" in the 1580s. The word has since…
From the Mon, Sep 28, 2026 roundup → - Nadir
Nadir — the lowest point of anything, literally or figuratively — comes from a medieval Arabic astronomical phrase meaning, roughly, "the point opposite the direction you're facing overhead." It entered the vocabulary of astronomers to describe the spot on…
From the Sat, Aug 15, 2026 roundup → - Talisman
A "talisman" — an object believed to protect its owner or bring good luck — traveled into English through French and Arabic from the Greek word telesma, meaning "consecration" or "religious rite," rooted in the verb telein, "to complete" or "to initiate into…
From the Tue, Aug 25, 2026 roundup → - Tariff
A "tariff" — a government tax on imported goods — is popularly, and probably wrongly, linked to Tarifa, a Spanish port town at the mouth of the Strait of Gibraltar where pirates or local rulers supposedly once levied tolls on passing ships. It's a tidy story…
From the Thu, Aug 20, 2026 roundup → - Typhoon
Modern "typhoon" is generally traced to a blend of two separate threads: the Chinese expression for "big wind" (taifeng, filtered through Cantonese sailors' pronunciation) and tufan, an Arabic, Persian, and Hindustani word for a violent storm or flood that…
From the Fri, Sep 4, 2026 roundup →