English words from Persian
Persian words traveled west along trade routes, often through Arabic or Turkish, and arrived in English as names for games, garments, fruits and colors.
- Ahura Mazda
Ahura Mazda is the supreme deity of Zoroastrianism, the god of wisdom and light. The Strait of Hormuz — the narrow, heavily watched waterway between Iran and Oman — is widely believed to carry his name through nearly three thousand years of sound changes…
From the Tue, Aug 4, 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 → - 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 → - Exchequer
Under the Norman kings, England's revenue was reckoned on a table covered with a cloth ruled into squares, like a chessboard, with counters moved between the squares to add up what each sheriff owed. The Anglo-French word for such a board was "escheker," a…
From the Tue, Sep 29, 2026 roundup → - Khaki
"Khaki" simply means "dust-colored," from a South Asian word for dust that entered English through the British Indian Army in the 1840s. British officers, tired of their bright white uniforms making them highly visible targets, began dyeing their cottons with…
From the Mon, Aug 17, 2026 roundup → - Pajamas
Before they were sleepwear, "pajamas" were just loose, drawstring trousers worn across South Asia, adapted from Hindi and Urdu. British colonists adopted the garment as comfortable at-home wear, brought the word home with them, and English eventually narrowed…
From the Fri, Sep 11, 2026 roundup → - Paradise
Long before it meant anything like heaven, "paradise" was an Old Persian word for a walled garden or royal hunting park, the kind of manicured, guarded enclosure a Persian king might retreat to. Greek and Latin writers borrowed the term for exactly that image…
From the Wed, Sep 9, 2026 roundup → - Tulip
Persian "dulband" is a turban, and Turkish speakers used a form of the word, "tülbent," for the flower whose opened bloom looked like one. The Flemish diplomat Ogier de Busbecq, sent to the Ottoman court in 1554, recorded the name in his letters home, and the…
From the Wed, Sep 30, 2026 roundup → - Uzbekistan
Central Asia's most populous country takes its name from a Turkic ethnic group whose own name is traditionally traced to a 14th-century Golden Horde khan, combined with the Persian suffix meaning land, shared by several of its neighbors. The territory passed…
From the Sun, Sep 20, 2026 roundup →