Talk:List of Arabic loanwords in English

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The whole page is peppered with misleading generalisations such as "English comes from Spanish". or "English comes from French"...it makes the list look amateur and unreliable. Of course it is entirely true that English is PARTIALLY, significantly rooted in French and Latin languages -- but to say, broadly and sweepingly "English comes from Spanish" is absurd,unscholarly and amatuer. Tidy up anyone? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 163.152.211.207 (talk) 11:07, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Comment 1

Does anyone else feel there should be at least a line to validate the claim of the word being derived from Arabic? It's quite unhelpful at present. Zoney 22:32, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

See new topic near the bottom. Hurmata 13:08, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, several of these are almost certainly wrong. This needs work. - Mustafaa 22:37, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)

This, for example:

* CheckMate Kish Mat "Chase - dead" (Kish is a warning phrase that must be said whenever the next step kills the king, it basically means "I'm chasing your king so you better move away", Maat means "died", aka your king has already died so don't even try)

I'd always heard it coming from Persian, not Arabic, and being shah mat -- death of the king. - Montréalais 03:02, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

To my knowledge, Arab speakers do not say "Kish Mat" but rather "Kish Malik" when the King is cornered, and "el-Malik Maat" or rarely "al-Shah Maat" when the oponent have no valid moves. - A.Khalil

from the OED etymology

"Adapted form (immed. from Arabic) of Pers. shāh ‘king’, also the ‘King’ in chess; in this specific sense the Pers. word was taken into Arabic, where arose the phrase shāh māt, ‘the King is dead’, i.e. can make no further move: see CHECKMATE. (This has been taken back into Persian in the form shāh māt gardad = the shāh becomes māt.) "

So shāh is of Persian origin, but it is a borrowing in the European languages from Arabic. And māt is Arabic, not Persian, in origin, according to the OED. And the whole phrase "checkmate" came to Europe from Arabic, so it should therefore still be included in this list (and note that "Check", which is purely Persian in origin, as opposed to mixed Persian and Arabic, is still in the list). Of course, a correct etymology should be in the list instead of the previous incorrect one. -Lethe | Talk

Words Removed

I removed Guadalajara, Alexander, and Alexanderia today, which were added by User:208.5.114.86. That same anon added Allah. It isn't clear to me that Allah is an English word, but I left it in. Dbenbenn 00:03, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Guadalajara was right; it's named after a place in Spain with the originally Arabic name waadii l-Hijaarah. The other two are wrong. - Mustafaa 11:23, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

On second thoughts, though, you were right to remove it: it's a placename. - Mustafaa 12:54, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Of course Allah is an English word since it is used by English speaking Muslims worldwide. Guadalajara is a place name, but it is a place name in English (and Spanish) for something that is not named by Arabs. It exists allover the Latin world and "Guad" also exists in other names (like Guadalupe River). Alexander and Alexandria are not Arab names per se, but the specific forms with which they are known and are used are Arabic, by adding AL (the) to both, and IYYAH to the later. If you have proof otherwise, please do provide it. Otherwise you are just following your "pre-determined" pro-Western opinion in removing them. --comment posted anonymously by 208.5.114.157 (contribs).

Please consider creating an account and logging in. It's free, it only takes a few seconds, and it allows you to take credit for you work.

To address your issues:

1. Alexander. The article doesn't mention Arabic, though that could be an oversight. My dictionary, Webster's NewWorld Dictionary, Second College Edition, 1982, says that "Alexander" comes via Latin from Greek.
2. Alexandria. The entry I removed was actually Alexanderia, which is not an English word. Also, it's a place name.
3. Guadalajara. Well, I guess one could fruitfully discuss whether to include place names in this list. But you'd have to come up with some criterion to keep it from becomming a List of Arabic places.

Dbenbenn 20:07, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Oh, for the love of... "Alexander" comes from the Greek words alexein "to protect" and aner (root form andr-) "male person". ia is an exceedingly common place-name ending, by no means limited to or originating with Arabic. Not everything that sounds vaguely like a modern Arabic word comes from Arabic. YBeayf 20:27, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Ok, can you tell me the true name of Alexander the Great, the original one, as his mother, father or others around him would have called him? As far as I could tell it was Iskandar of Macedon, and not Alexander. His city, at the time, would be called Iskandarona, and not Alexandria. --comment posted anonymously by 208.5.114.157 (contribs).

It would have been Alexandros or something very similar. I'd like to know where you got the notion that it would have been anything like Iskandar. YBeayf 21:00, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

See below for a response on Alexander, sorry. Another question relates to names of people and specially those that have been absorbed in the English speaking world by use, such as Jamal or Karim, and those of the Islamic age that have been Latinized, such as Averroes or Avecinna? The first are demonstratively used by English speaking people and the names do have a meaning associated with them. The second are actually completely latinized that no one would know whom they refer to unless he/she is told the original Arabic name.

I removed lacquer because it did not come to European languages from Arabic and myrrh because its etymology is simply unknown beyond the vague "it's Semitic". I removed "allah" and "muslim" because they are nothing but names from a foreign language to describe ideas or entities specific to some religion. It's the same logic as "Tokyo". To discuss Japan, we must mention "Tokyo". Not only do many outsiders discuss Tokyo, they visit it. But it would be idle to include "Tokyo" in vocabulary lists for English, Arabic, Spanish, what have you. Anybody with an IQ above moron knows where the words "Allah" and "muslim" come from (they come from the religion of Islam) and what they mean. (Or know close enough what they mean. "Allah" means "the god", not just "god". "Laa illaahu min allaahi, muhammadu rasuulu allaahi" -- [there is] no god but *the* god, Mohammed [is] his messenger". It's a venerable mystery why "the god" is "allaah" instead of "al-illaah". Apologies if my use of the case suffixes 'i' and 'u' is incorrect.) Hurmata 12:51, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

If mister Hurmata will have the chance to get hold of Chaucer's book "The Canterbury Tales", he will be perhaps surprised to find out that Chaucer uses from beginning to end the pronoun "Hem" (them in arabic) instead of "Them". He also uses the world "Goddes" (kouddous meaning the sacred one in arabic) instead of "God". This is one of the very first books to have been written in english (14th C.), and it is full of encounters of this type. Please see my contribution to the origin of the word "earth" for additional information. Pheniki (talk) 14:36, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

The word "woman" is the contraction of "womb" and "an". The first one comes from the arabic word "umm" and "an" means simply "one", "oon" in arabic, and "un" in french. The plural of "woman" is "women" because "en" means many, as in arabic. The word "seven" is a contraction of "sev" + "en", exactly as in arabic "seb-en". It is the phenicien language (ie arabic) that is at the origin of all this. Pheniki (talk) 14:47, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

What is with you and 'Phoenician' Pheniki? One in Arabic is 'wahid' along with Seven being 'sabaa'(wish I had Arabic coding on my kb)Sight2 (talk) 07:52, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Aniline

comment moved from article -- Ferkelparade π 08:23, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Aniline : ultimately from Sanskrit nilah "dark blue" (So you would have us believe that the River NILE was named by Sanskrit speaking people from India? Did the Ancient Egytians come from India too so the Nila color would be Sanskrit? This cannot be true.) -- User:68.12.103.47

No, it's more likely that "aniline" derives from a Sanskrit word nilah meaning "dark blue", and that "Nile" ultimately comes from a Semitic root "N-H-L" meaning "valley" or "river" (cf. Hebrew nahal "dry river") and any similarity between the two words is coincidental. Also, please stop adding words that are obviously from Latin not Arabic. YBeayf 10:56, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I completely disagree with you. Aniline came to English and othe European languages from Arabic, not Sanskrit. The Arabic, form is Al-Nili, which would be pronounced An-Nili by amalgaming the "N" sound. This, in Arabic, comes from the color of the NILE river. The Nile, which is blue, is named such by Egyptians and they still use "Nilah" as a color blue. The Egyptians, which you so easily removed ftom the comment, dyed themselves blue when mourning, and till this very day would tell someone "Gatak Nilah" which is "May you [dye] yourself blue." meaning may someone close to you die. Also, the word ending in Nilah is typical of Arabic femenen form and not Sanskrit.

Also, many words in Latin do have roots in the so called "Semitic" languages to which Arabic belongs, and, following your own logic elswhere, and since "Semitic" is more ancient, it must be that those words came to Arabic before they did to Latin, or, at least came to Arabic directly from the source language, say Aramaic, and subsequently were adopted into European languages from Arabic directly and not through Latin. Also, you have to remember that Latin was an integral culture and language to the Middle East, where Arabic dominates today, long before it was related to Europe and the West. Latin culture traces its roots to Greek culture, who trace their roots to Egypt and the Levant (East Mediterranean). No one in the Pre-18th Century world have thought that the Romans and the Greeks are more kin to the Britts or French that say to the Syrians or any of the Arabs.

With all due respect, I submit that you do not know what you are talking about. Greek was the lingua franca of the eastern Mediterranean, not Latin, which always had its home in the Italic peninsula. The Latinate sphere of influence was in Western Europe, not in the Near East. Greek culture does not in fact trace its origin to Egypt. The Indo-European languages and the Semitic languages are of equal antiquity; neither is more "ancient" than the other. Many of the words that have been submitted on here are demonstrably of Indo-European origin, and have nothing at all to do with the Semitic languages. It is true that Latin did have some borrowings from Arabic, but these borrowings are without fail from middle and late Latin, as prior to the Islamic conquests Arabic was fairly limited to the Arabian peninsula and exerted no great influence on the languages of the Near East. Even if elements of Greek culture were borrowed from the Levant, that still has nothing to do with Arabic, because *Arabic was not spoken in those areas*, nor was it spoken in Egypt. Saying that nobody prior to the 18th century would have disputed that the Graeco-Romans were closer to the Syrians or Arabs than to Western Europeans is balderdash -- French itself is a direct descendant of Latin! In point of fact, it is likely that many more terms were adopted into Arabic from Greek or Latin than vice-versa, simply because those languages were widespread long before Arabic was, and classical Arabic culture borrowed much from the Graeco-Roman tradition.

In any case, the point remains that nila is the Sanskrit word for "blue", and that it and the name of the river Nile have nothing to do with each other. If "nila" is an extant word in modern Egyptian Arabic, then it is virtually certain that it was borrowed ultimately from the Sanskrit, and does not derive from the name of the Nile, and I defy you to produce a reputable cite that says otherwise. YBeayf 18:28, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Indeed, the Oxford English Dictionary, in the "Nile" entry says:

< Nile, the name of a river in North and Eastern Central Africa. Cf. classical Latin Nīlus, ancient Greek Νειλος (Hesiod), of unknown origin.

The ancient Egyptian name was jtrw river (> Hebrew yȇ'ōr).

In Old and Middle English the name of the river is attested both as Nilus and Nil; the form Nile is attested from the 15th cent. onwards.

There is no evidence whatsoever that the word "Nile" came from Arabic in any way at all whatsoever. Further, the ancient Egyptians, who gave it the name jtrw, didn't speak Arabic.

Under "aniline" it says:

[f. (by Fritzche 1841) ANIL indigo + -INE.]

referring back to the entry for "anil", which says:

[a. Fr. or Pg. anil = Sp. añil, ad. Arab. an-nīl, i.e. al the + nīl, Arab. and Pers. ad. Skr. nīlī indigo (and -plant), f. nīla dark blue.]

which seems to indicate that the word did indeed go through Arabic before it came to English, but Arabic is neither the proximate nor the ultimate language of borrowing.Nohat 19:54, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

So which way is it? Does Aniline come to English from the Name of the River Nile through Arabic, or would the Arabs have to wait a while, go to India, pich up the word, modify it a little and then give it to English? Also, I've just asked my Indian friend and he told me that in Sanskrit nila is green, and not blue.

Also, the Ancient Egyptians did not speak Arabic, but they did not speak Sanskrit either. In actuality, the Ancient Egyptian and Arabic do share many of the linguistic constructs and words. Many words in Egyptian are derived from its Eastern Neighbors, wheather you want to call them Arab or not is a moot question since thery are historically related and do presently consider themselves and are considered by others as Arab. The reverse is also true. Many words is Arabic come from Ancient Egyptian either directly or through mediation of another language, sometimes Semetic, sometime Greek and sometimes Latin. Having said that I must proclaim that I myself do not subscribe to language or racial families, which are demonstratively biblical bullshit, and look at the whole of humanity as being a great big sea with water mixing all around at all times. Of course, the closer the distance the similar the waters, and this is true of cultures and languages. Also, nothing precludes that a language claimed to be "Indo-European" by Western historians, as if this means anything, was not actually developed by a so called "Semetic" people and then passed on to the more barbaric Aryans. Afterwards, the Semetic people either advanced beyond it or rejoined the other Semetic peoples and adopted one of the Semetic languages. It is all nonesense of course, but the whole construct of "families" is nonesense too. Now, seriously, does anyone really know the HISTORICAL path of the word, in distiction to the assumed, and biased, path of origin which is usually given in dictionaries?

Yep, you definitely have no idea what you are talking about. My patience for dealing with a profoundly benighted anonymous user has run out. This conversation is over. Come back when you have a username and some actual sources other than your own imagination. Nohat 06:53, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

There is no need for this childish response or any undue remarks. I've checked your profile and you are not the GOD of the site. If you consider yourself intelligent then do provide answers when asked or shut up, but don't be a moron. As for getting a login, that is not required by the site and certainly I would not do it on your orders. If you do have clout, then do please change the policy of the site and make a login required for any posting. Absent that, again, please keep your attention to the topic and just respond to what is asked or discussed, politely.

Anonymous commenter, please create an account. It only takes a few seconds. You're right that logging in is not required; but it's impolite to have an extended conversation with someone without introducing yourself. Dbenbenn 00:11, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

While most user identities I checked did not have real information about the people behind them, and as such did not really introduce themselves, I'll do it just because you are nice :), but that does not negat the fact that Nohat is childish and a jerk.

Even if Nohat is "childish and a jerk" (though I've not seen evidence of that yet), that does not change the fact that your linguistic theories are nonsense, and that you have yet to provide a citation for any of your claims. YBeayf 01:57, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Neither have you provided citation for that matter. The only evidence I found so far of the origin of Alexander as you state is from a Website on baby names. What a reference! On the other hand, I have tons of Near Eatern histories that call him Iskandar, and they would know since they encountered him, lived the hellenistic age and even supposidly worshipped his person, and also an article on his reference in Indian culture that lists his Sanskrit name as being Skanda, again without the AL so typical of Arabic. The fact that I disagree with you does not mean that my questions are not valid, and the fact that you only know Western histories is your loss not mine. Get out of the box a little and see if your mind can take you to other places. If we all went only by the knowledge within encyclopedias and dictionaries then knowledge would not advance at all. And yes, I have not signed in yet, so grow up and live with it.

I can assure you that whatever baby name site you viewed, it was not my source. May I ask what Near Eastern histories you have read, and in what language they were composed? If, as I suspect, they were in Arabic, then the fact that Alexander is referred to as "Iskandar" is no surprise, as that is the Arabic form of his name. The fact that his name in Arabic is "Iskandar" or in Sanskrit is "Skanda" is irrelevant, because his name is GREEK. Alexander was a Greek, he spoke Greek, and to suggest that mutations of his name in other languages somehow mean that his name was Iskandar is ludicrous. Therefore, I must once again ask you for a cite (preferably a reputable one, but at this point I'd be interested in seeing *anything* other than your bald assertions), and I shall not return to this conversation until you have produced one. YBeayf 05:59, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Anonymous comment above: "Neither have you provided citation for that matter." Actually, I cited Webster's dictionary above. Ball's in your court. (By the way, note that the issue is ultimately about how English got the name "Alexander". Details about Alexander the Great are logically secondary.) Dbenbenn 20:01, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Webster or any other source I looked at did say that it came from Latin from Greek, or just Greek, which is not saying much for the main question. What I am asking about is the assertion that "'Alexander' comes from the Greek words alexein 'to protect' and aner (root form andr-) 'male person'" which is not found in any of the sources available to us the general public. What is the source and is this attested by the existence of "alexein" as a word and/or in other names, or is it constructed, assumed, presummed, probable, possible or any of the words that mean that it is not set in stone.

I know I said I'd stay out of this, but I couldn't resist. Anonymous poster, please see the Latin text of Quintus Curtius Rufus's Life of Alexander the Great. For your convenience, I shall quote the first sentence of Book III, Chapter 1: "Inter haec Alexander ad conducendum ex Peloponneso militem Cleandro cum pecunia misso Lyciae Pamphyliaeque rebus conpositis ad urbem Celaenas exercitum admovit" (emphasis mine). This text was written in the 1st century CE, and should, even if it doesn't have anything to say about "alexein", nevertheless show the absurdity of claiming that "Alexander" comes from "al-Iskandar", unless you are going to claim that a 1st-century Latin author took the name of Alexander from Arabic. YBeayf 18:58, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

See, that was easy. Now I can follow your link and ponder on it a little and see if I can find more information. And you provided us with a link too, great. Hope it did not cost you much! Still, you have not told me yet about the origin/source of your break down of the name to "alexein" and "andr" components. This info would be very helpful. By the way, do I have to enter my name or does this thing do it automatically?

Regarding the origin of the name Alexander, see the entry from the Online Etymology Dictionary: 'masc. proper name, from L., from Gk. Alexandros "defender of men," from alexein "to ward off, keep off, turn (something) away, defend, protect" + aner (gen. andros) "man." The first element is related to Gk. alke "protection, help, strength, power, courage," alkimos "strong;" cf. also Skt. raksati "protects," O.E. ealgian "to defend." ' To put your name and the date you posted, enter four tildes in a row -- they will be converted to the name/date stamp. YBeayf 20:28, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Type ~~~~ at the end of your message to sign it. You still haven't provided any sources for your shall we say extremely unorthodox linguistic theories. But:

• [1]
• [2]
• [3]
• [4]
• [5]

Nohat 20:46, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Well, thanks for all the links, even though it seems that they all drink from the same stream. However, I find in one of the sources Nohat gave that "in fact it goes back even further to a King of the Hittites (Turkey) called "Alaksandus". (1300 B.C.)." So, if it is a Hittite name, how come it has a Greek etymology? Anyone would care to comment on this? ItisIAnonymous 21:49, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps this discussion should be taken somewhere else, as it doesn't have much to do with this list of words of Arabic origin. Whether it came from Hittite or Greek, it doesn't belong here. Dbenbenn 23:18, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Suggestions

Extra words that OED derives from Arabic: burka, merino. OED disagrees with the derivation from Arabic of many words on this page. There is also an issue with words coming from other languages (esp Sanskrit and Persian) via Arabic, as they are included inconsistently. --Zero 07:28, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Which words does the OED disagree with? I believe I checked most of the doubtful ones, and removed the ones that weren't at least arguably from Arabic. If you can tell me which words you think are wrong I will be more than happy to delete them provided no dictionary asserts Arabic origins. If only one dictionary asserts Arabic origins or the Arabic origins are merely probable or possible, then the entries on this page should say so.

You are correct about inconsistent treatment of words coming from other languages. For related pages, the method I have been using, although it isn't complete really on any page is like this:

If the word's evolution was as follows: source language form1 > proximate language form2 > English form3, then on List of English words of source language origin, there would be an entry like this:

form3

from form1 via proximate language form2

and on the List of words of proximate language origin, there would be an entry like this:

form3

from form2, from source language form1

If there was more than one intermediate language, the handling has varied. We should probably decide on a standard way to do it. Also, if any of the dictionaries consulted were equivocal about the origins of the word, I added either probably or possibly before the word from, depending on how equivocal the etymology was. Further, we might decide to divide each page up into sections by words proximately borrowed from the language, words ultimately borrowed from the language, and words that passed through the language on their way to English. Let's discuss potential standard practices for these pages at Talk:Lists of English words of international origin. We might also want to move Lists of English words of international origin to Lists of borrowed words in English or delete the page altogether now that we have the category. Nohat 08:09, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Call for Opinion on Kermes

Regarding the listing below,

kermes

قرمز qirmiz (via Spanish; ultimately from Sanskit krmi-ja "worm-produced")

I doubt that an Arab would say "qirmiz" in classical or in slang, but rather "qurmozi" قرمزي

Also it is Sanskrit and not Sanskit

Anyone objects to this modification?

I have checked and found that the "Merriam-Webster" dictionary attributes the english word "Crimson" to the arabic origin "Kermes". Here is the link http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/wftwarch.pl?010206 and here is the text snippet:
Crimson entered English during the 15th century from an Old Spanish version of the Arabic word for kermes. What are kermes? They are the dried female bodies of a round scale insect about the size of a pea that are found on the dwarf evergreen kermes oak of the Mediterranean region. These kermes constitute a very old—perhaps the oldest—dyestuff known to produce a red color.

Persian words

The following Persian words which were wrongly listed as the words of Arabic ORIGIN were ommited by me from the list:

zircon

from Persian Zarnikh

vizier

From middl-ePersian Vichir

spinach

Orange

lemon

lilac

lime

julep

from Persian Gulab

guitar from Persian sitaar (thrre snares)

galingale

check

checkmate

shah."

candy from Persian Qand

borax

from Persian Burah

azure

from Persian Lajevard

algorithm

from Persian Khwarazmi

Almost all of these should be restored. Most English borrowings from Persian are via Arabic, and some of these - algorithm, for instance - are purely Arabic. - Mustafaa 17:22, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Names or Words

There are some parts of this list which are proper names and therefore oughtn't be here - I'm thinking of the names of Stars. These are not English but English transliterations of the Arabic, as opposed to words which have been taken into the English language such as admiral. GraemeLeggett 18:39, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Contended Words

Candy

I've made my frist Wikipedia submission by adding candy to this list and I've noticed it has be removed. I'm not at all interested in any sort of "editing wars" so I'd prefer to simply write my source and ask why it was unacceptable. The American Heritage Dictionary (entry "candy") states the current etymology/spelling of candy is via Middle English candi via Old French sucre candi (or Old Italian zucchero candi) via Arabic sukkar qandy. This is very likely from the Persian qand which in turn is possibly from the Sanskrit khanda and/or from an older, Dravidian word. Is this in dispute? Does the OED disagree with this etymology?

Your etymology is correct. However, we've had words like this in the past, and ultimately they were not kept on the page. With 'candy', its ultimate origin was not in Arabic, and English didn't borrow it from Arabic. It passed through Arabic on its way to English, but that's not really enough to say that it's an English word of Arabic origin. Depending on how you look at it, it's an English word of French origin, or an English word of Sanskrit (or Dravidian) origin. YBeayf 01:52, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I can see how this would be appropriate. Having the simple rules that either the words enters English direct from Arabic, or the words' etymologies are traced back only as far as Arabic. Perhaps this should be stated at the top of the page? It would be more clear for visitors looking for information or for prospective submitters, like myself, to understand which words should be on this list. (Sorry, but I forgot to sign my previous comment.) Jestem 18:36, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

alcohol

My understanding is that this comes from ikhal, meaning dark blue as its core meaning (contrast with izraq for light, or sky, blue). I suppose that colour would have been a popular eye shadow choice, but that wasnt the primary meaning of the word. Perhaps it had something to do with alcohol's chemical reaction with certain pH indicators too. Rhialto 02:31, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

'Ikhal', etc.: all just conjecture, and false. The conjecture about color terms may be thoughtful; but as for chemistry, ethanol doesn't make any pH indicators change color (at least not any that were known during the Islamic world's golden age of scholarship). The etymology of 'alcohol' is readily accessible. 'Alcohol' has long been recognized as coming rather from the Ar. 'kuHl', which is said to mean the chemical element, antimony, but more likely means its compound, stibnite. Neither of these is dark blue. There is an extensive etymology for 'alcohol' at dictionary.reference.com. Hurmata 10:34, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

According to the article on [antimony], the Arabic root for that element is quite different - Arabic انتيمون ([al-]ithmīd). Either you are in error, or that article is. I cheerfully admit to knowing nothing of the Arabic word for antimony, but if you are certain, perhaps that article should be corrected too? Rhialto 15:06, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

There is certainly a mistake in Antimony, because the Arabic cited انتيمون reads 'antimun', and nothing like 'ithmĩd'. However, the OED reports a conjectural derivation of 'antimony' from Arabic 'uthmud', earlier 'ithmid', itself possibly from Greek 'στιμμι', also the origin of 'stibium'. So if that conjecture is borne out (I haven't checked any more recent references than OED1), the article is correct except for the erroneous Arabic citation. In any case, this is the derivation of the English word 'antimony', and says nothing about whether a different Arabic word - 'kohl' might be more prominent - as it certainly is today; the interwiki link to ar.wikipedia is to كحل, 'kahl'. --ColinFine 00:28, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Added Crimson to the list

I found an article on "Merriam-Webster" online dictionary discussing the origin of this word. Here is the link: http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/wftwarch.pl?010206

I dispute this, as both "crimson" and "kermes" ultimately come from Sanskrit. They passed through Arabic on their journey to English, but that doesn't mean they are of Arabic origin. YBeayf 06:02, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

The American Heritage dictionary of the English language states the word crimson is from "Middle English cremesin, from Old Spanish cremesín, Old Italian cremesino or Medieval Latin cremesnus, all from Arabic qirmizy, from qirmiz, kermes insect." [6] And for the word kermes, it says that it probably came from a Sanskirt word. [7] You people decide what it is, I find this all confusing. --Inahet 06:53, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Capitalized

I have capitalized each word as per the general convention in a dictionary entry. --Bhadani 07:07, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Gypsum

I've removed this portion

"?? an "unidentifified Semitic root" is not the same as Arabic!

"; gypsum : from Greek gypsos "chalk", from unidentified Semitic root; akin to Arabic jibs

well Arabic is the closest of so-called Semetic langauge to the proto-Semitic language

While it's true Arabic is a very conservative Semitic language, until the rise of Islam it was confined to the Arabian peninsula, and the Semitic language the Hellenic world had the most contact with was Aramaic. It's quite unlikely that "gypsum", "myrrh", or various other Greek-derived words originating in an unknown Semitic language had their origin with Arabic. YBeayf 05:25, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, the Greeks did receive their myrrh from Arabs in Yemen in ancient times. It's likely that the name did come from the Arabic word murra, but this word is also present in other Semitic languages as well see bartleby. --Inahet 06:38, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

What evidence have you for calling Arabic a 'very conservative Semitic language?' Alice Faber, in "Genetic Subgrouping of the Semitic Languages" (in Hetzron, Robert (1997). The Semitic Languages. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-05767-1.) lists two distinctive innovations of 'West Semitic', and five more for 'Central Semitic' within that, which is where she places Arabic. While she is certainly not claiming that the classification she uses is the only possible one, she remarks that one of the main differences among the various classification schemes proposed is which group within West Semitic Arabic should be placed closest to. Either way, this does not suggest that Arabic is particularly conservative.

As for Myrrh from Yemen: I don't think there was much Arabic down there before Islamic times. They would have spoken various South Arabian languages (such as Sabean and Himyaritic) - Semitic, defeinitely, but not close to Arabic. ColinFine 23:53, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Pardon me for not citing precise evidence, but Hetzron himself, and Kees Versteegh, both conclude that the *phonology* of Arabic is conservative relative to other Semitic languages. (Hetzron when he summarizes Semitic in Comrie, B, ed., 1987, The world's major languages (Oxford), and Versteegh 1997, The Arabic language (Columbia U. Press)). Granted, experts can be mistaken (march of science and all that  :) ). Hurmata 10:04, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

On the other hand, it is of course a crude fallacy to equate even the oldest recorded Arabic (centuries before Islam) with Proto-Semitic. Hurmata 11:10, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

YBeayf, The rationale of the first paragraph is flawless.

Then again, by the time the Greeks had been present in the area stretching from northern Egypt and Syria - inclusive - a variety of Arabic had been spoken in Northern Arabia and probably in Arabia Petra too. So it's not far-fetched. While I'm not making assertions about this particular etymology, we don't seems to have enough information to rule otherwise.

--A. Gharbeia (talk) 21:11, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Lake pigments

The words "lake" and "pigment" are not of Arabic origin, see lake and pigment. Also, if they were of Arabic origin, then they should be listed separately. --Inahet 05:20, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Well I'll be... IIRC, the "pigments" part was never intended to be listed as having come from Arabic, but was added to make clear that the word being referenced referred to the pigment and not the body of water. YBeayf 13:56, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, the etymology of the pigment "lake" is in the link I provided:

lake: "deep red coloring matter," 1616, from Fr. laque (see lac), from which it was obtained.

lac: ::"red resinous substance," 1553, from Pers. lak, from Hindi lakh (Prakrit lakkha), from Skt. laksha, which according to Klein is lit. "one hundred thousand," in ref. to the insects that gather in great numbers on the trees and make the resin run out. But others say lakh is an alteration of Skt. rakh, from an IE root word for "color" [Webster]. Still another guess is that Skt. laksha is related to Eng. lax, lox "salmon," and the substance was perhaps originally so called from being somewhat the color of salmon.--Inahet 06:31, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Sugar

According to the sugar article, it was derived from Sanskrit through Arabic. --24.16.148.75 19:11, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

• Yes, this is the case according to AHD [8]. If you peruse Wikipedia English etymology pages, you'll find many, many such instances and you'll also find that if you change them, they might be reverted. Some people like to list the word at every intermediary language bewteen English and it's ultimate source.--Hraefen ^Talk 21:24, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Earth

The word Earth is used in the Quran: "Al Ard" = "The Earth". As I saw no mention of it in the list given, maybe someone could clarify on this subject? Thanks.

I think the word "earth" should be included in the list. Earth in Arabic (pronounced earth in Arabic too) means inheritance, heritage, legacy, patrimony, succession.

It was put in a few weeks ago, and I removed it. The Germanic root behind 'earth' is too old to be from Arabic. It is possible - though not widely accepted - that the root might indeed be a borrowing from a Semitic language (see for example Theo Vennemann's article in the latest Transactions of the Philological Society - I'll add the proper reference when I have it with me), but it cannot be from Arabic. ColinFine 11:47, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

The origin of the english word "earth" will, perhaps, become clearer if we added an important information which has never been taken into account, that the word is phoenician and the phoenicians spoke arabic. Since the phoenician language is older than the germanic language, it can also be said that germanic derives from the phoenician language which was arabic. There are hundreds of words, if not thousands, in the celtic, english and french languages that seem to have originated from the phoenician language (ie arabic). As an example, the scots still say "eyn" for the word "eye". This is pronounced in the same way as in arabic. It has evolved to "eye" in english and "oeil" in french. Another word is "qasr" in arabic which became "castle" in english and "chateau" in french. Why ? you may ask, the letter "c" has changed into "ch", it is just a matter of pronounciation: some people, pronounce the glottoral "q" as "k" and "k" as "tch". Another word is "karam" in arabic, "charm" in english and charme" in french. Another word is "baqqar" in arabic, "butcher" in english and boucher" in french. Another word is "koursi" in arabic, "chairs" in english and "chaise" in french, and the list is long ... Pheniki (talk) 09:20, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

ColinFine is right.

Phenicians spoke a Semitic language, which - being a relative of Arabic, has many similarities to it.

Additionally, by the time Phoenicians were speaking their language, the Indo-European and the Afro-Asiatic branches had long been separate. So, either the origin of the word "earth" existed in their hypothetical ancestor and evolved separately in each branch, or it was a very old borrowing, but again, not from Arabic proper, and likely not from Phoenician either, but rather from an ancestor of theirs.

--A. Gharbeia (talk) 20:16, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

merge

I created List of exported Arabic terms and recently discovered this. Is there any merit at all in my article, or should it just be outright merged? Is this a Sub-article to my article? --Striver 10:30, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Arrack

Is it possible that arrack is from ʻaraq directly, and not al-araq? The etymology now is only one word.

-Misha

216.254.12.114 15:50, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Oh, and should "alcázar" be on the list?

216.254.12.114 17:32, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Alcazar? Of course not -- it's not an English *word*, it's an *artefact* (broadly speaking, in the archaeological sense) and it's not even located in an English speaking territory. "Mount Fuji" and "Taj Mahal" and "Louvre" -- just because most English speaking people know about them and just because the Taj Mahal and the Louvre get mentioned relatively often by English speaking people, doesn't make them "English words". Hurmata 09:54, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Betelgeuse

The etymology given for Betelgeuse is: beit al-jeuza "House of Gemini".

This seems to disagree with other very thorough explanations of the origins of the word. Other sources say something more like "Hand of Gemini"

One funny thing is that both "house" and "hand" are the names of semitic letters (bet and yod)

216.254.12.114 18:52, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

One can gain a feeling of satisfaction by doing some research first. Nowadays with Web search engines, it's easier than ever, too. First off, Betelgeuse is in the constellation of Orion, which is not part of the constellation of Gemini. Second, you do not cite any source that "gives the etymology"; and in fact, the 'bet-' is NOT the Arabic word for 'house'. I suggest clicking on the "star names page" link at the top of http://astro.isi.edu/reference/starintro.html. That page discusses various name and etymology corruptions that have arisen over the centuries, some of which have befallen "Betelgeuse". These pages seem to be a hobbyist effort, but a very sophisticated one. Hurmata 10:48, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Why are you saying "bet" is not Arabic for house?

Unless you are epecifically emphasising that "dar" is the word for a proper house, and that "baet"/"bait"/"bet" means "portable animal-hair house", which is eventually a dwelling, then I cannot figure out a reason for this.

--A. Gharbeia (talk) 20:29, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Ok, that seemed a bit harsh. Your words of wisdom were very...painful for me. To someone younger or more sensitive than myself, this could actually deter someone from learning, asking questions or having curiousity. Oh, and these are the talk pages, where it's alright to be wrong, or ask questions, or not do the reasearch at all, but alert others to...things.

Now on to the real stuff. In my American Heritage Dictionary, it says that jauzaa' referred first to Gemini, and later to Orion.

I was only pointing the dubious nature of the etymology given. I left it to someone more expert than I to find a good etymology.

I did not say that bet- was Arabic for house, in this word or any other. It was an unrelated comment about the names of letters. If you'll notice, I was going against the etymology given, "House of Gemini". And the site you linked me to basically agreed with me. Yad. Hand.

It actually looks like someone fixed up the etymology on this one. Everything is fine now. Oh wait. It was you who changed it. To something closer to my definition.

I'm sorry if my writing was not clear enough. I feel that I do do research. And maybe you weren't being sarcastic, and I got hurt for no reason at all. It's always so hard to tell on the internet. I might be getting paranoid.

-Misha Vargas

216.254.12.114 18:39, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

How about changing the very name of this entry?

Instead of "words of Arabic origin", it would be correct to say "words borrowed from Arabic". As was pointed out over a year ago, the *origins* of some words *immediately borrowed* from Arabic by one or another European language are actually not Arabic, but Persian, Latin, or Greek (some words borrowed from Arabic had actually been earlier borrowed by Arabic from Latin or Greek). Hurmata 09:47, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Etymologies

I think it is ill advised to copy etymologies from OED or another dictionary, except in unusual cases. This is needless duplication. I suggest that the value of this Wiki entry is to reveal the influence of the Arabic language on English vocabulary. We do not need to spent oodles of time reproducing etymologies that people can readily find at http://dictionary.reference.com. I *do* think we should mention when Arabic itself borrowed a word that English has borrowed from Arabic. At any rate, those OED etymologies that somebody put in the 'A' section use *highly* nonstandard transcriptions. 'k with subscript dot' is only appropriate to occasional specialist discussions; the proper romanization for general use is 'q'! Hurmata 13:08, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

The addition of an entry for 'caliber' raises several points regarding the content and formatting of the entries in this list.

• As I mentioned earlier in this discussion, we need to be more diligent in confirming the etymological claims we find in any one dictionary. In the case of 'caliber', the DRAE disagrees with etymonline.com on some of the details: "Del fr. calibre, este del ár. clás. qālab o qālib, este del pelvi kālbod, y este del gr. καλωπους, horma"
• Another "again": I believe it clutters this article to repeat the full etymologies we rely on. Let's instead provide links to them (either to the specific Web page or to the Web site).Hurmata 17:59, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Transcription/romanization

This is inherently difficult because out in the world of Arabic studies there isn't uniformity. There are many points for which rival alternatives are equally worthy. I made a start at standardizing the transcription: long vowels represented with macrons (double letters, aa, ii, uu, would be equally well advised, in my opinion); 'q' for k-dot; '7' for glottal stop. The cayn/9ayn is especially troublesome because out in the world there are close to half a dozen choices. 'C' is objectively the best (it best mimics the shape of the Arabic letter, it requires no special typewriting, and it isn't psychologically disruptive as '9' is, '9' being a numeral already), but tradition is strongly against 'c'. Hurmata 13:08, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Forced logouts Dec. 2, 2006

Twice this morning, I have gotten logged out of Wikipedia without my realizing it, then I post some changes. But it looks like up until now, nobody else has edited the page. Hurmata 16:44, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Response to remark about transliteration

"KazakhPol" deleted line spaces in between letter sections of the list. And left the mysterious comment, "transliterated words don't belong in the list". What precisely is KP referring to, and why not? Do they really mean that the "al-qubba" that accompanies "alcove" doesn't belong? *That*, "al-qubba", is a transliteration. Did KP use the words that express what they really mean?

Incidentally, the decision to give the Arabic scripts for the entries was made by my predecessors. I have accepted it, checking many of them and correcting several. Hurmata 03:45, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Earth again

A user not logged in added "earth". People who do this seem to have little regard for historical fact and logical reasoning. "Earth" is in the core vocabulary of all the Germanic languages (but apparently not of neighboring branches of Indo-European), and on this basis alone has to date back at least 2,000 years. Furthermore, the word has indeed been traced back to Proto-Indo-European (the Slavic and Italic branches use other roots to mean "earth, land, ground"). Only a Middle Eastern chauvinist would fail to see that Europeans were not borrowing from Arabic before the rise of Islam, which was, of course, less than 1,500 years ago. It is a pity that some chauvinistic people insist on finding Arabic influence where none exists. Hurmata 04:31, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Please see the topic "Earth" above, contribution of 7 October 2006. (As to the possibility that the Proto-Indo-European source of Germanic *erþ- might have reflexes in non-Germanic: possibly some words in Welsh, Armenian, and the Baltic languages. But they are not those languages' generic words for "earth" or "ground". That's why I think it's valid to say that Gothic aírþa, modern German Erde, English earth are "distinctively Germanic".) Hurmata 09:00, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

I thought I should add the following information (already mentionned in the topic Earth above) to bring about a different contribution to that of Hurmata's.

The origin of the english word "earth" will, perhaps, become clearer if we add an important information which has never been taken into account, that the word is phoenician and the phoenicians spoke arabic. Since the phoenician language is older than the germanic language, it can also be said that germanic derives from the phoenician language which was arabic. There are hundreds of words, if not thousands, in the celtic, english and french languages that seem to have originated from the phoenician language (ie arabic). As an example, the scots still say "eyn" for the word "eye". This is pronounced in the same way as in arabic. Is has evolved to "eye" in english and "oeil" in french. Another word is "qasr" in arabic which became "castle" in english and "chateau" in french. Why ? you may ask, the letter "c" has changed into "ch", it is just a matter of pronounciation: some people, pronounce the glottoral "q" as "k" and "k" as "tch". Another word is "karam" in arabic, "charm" in english and charme" in french. Another word is "baqqar" in arabic, "butcher" in english and boucher" in french. Another word is "koursi" in arabic, "chairs" in english and "chaise" in french, and the list is long ... I should add that Chaucer's book, "The Canterbury Tales" (14th C) is a good start for universities to do a proper research now that they have staff who master the arabic language. They will discover some good evidence, like the following uses: "eyen" for "eye", "hem" for "them", "oon" for "one", etc ... Pheniki (talk) 14:22, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

The Phoenicians did not speak Arabic. They spoke the Phoenician language - related to Arabic, indeed, but not particularly closesly. Alice Faber (in Hetzron (ed), Robert (1998). The Semitic Languages. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-0576701. {{cite book}}: |last= has generic name (help)) discusses the grouping of the Semitic languages, and the fact that the position of Arabic in the tree is disputed. However, it is generally agreed that Phoenician is North-West Semitic (distinguished, for example, by the generalisation of the suffix '-nu' to pronominal forms for the 1st person plural), and Arabic is not.

Many people over the years have noticed the similarity between Germanic 'erþó' and Semitic "'rṣ", and at least one scholar, Theo Veenemann, has argued for a whole slew of borrowings from Semitic languages into Germanic (see for example Transactions of the Philological Society 104:129 (2006)). But even if you accept these as borrowings - and most scholars do not - this has nothing to do with Arabic, which did not exist at the time when the borrowings would have to have taken place.

Given that you do not have enough linguistic knowledge to distinguish between two very different languages, your other points are of very little value. The origins of 'eye' in Germanic 'augon' and 'oeil' in Latin 'oculus' are well-established (and those two roots probably from a single Indo-European root - with, note, no pharyngial and no /n/). Wikipedia is a place for solidly-referenced, verifiable information. Even if your claims were true they would be original research and so inadmissible. --ColinFine (talk) 22:21, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Free for all list!?

More than half of the words listed here are just as easily derived from Hebrew. What kind of list is this and how is it sourced? frummer 23:37, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

• Indignation of this empty, ideologically driven type does no service to the pursuit of knowledge. The questions are just rhetorical questions (they ignore statements in the article). The opening statement is stubborn in ignoring history fact, and mischievous in insinuating that dozens of words have been designated as Arabic loanwords without any basis of research. Hurmata 16:49, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Disrespectful edits on 6 Jan 2007

A user who did not log in, "89.148.43.17", restored sections which have been heavily edited during more than a month's time. In so doing, this user (1) deleted the fruits of days worth of article research done *offline*; (2) did not bother to respond to previous entries in this Discussion page -- nor to respond to paragraphs in the article's introduction -- that justify the past weeks' edits.

I have resorted to doing a revert because my attempt to use Wikipedia's new "Undo" editing feature failed.

As for point (1), I did substantial research for the entries for "alcohol" and "kohl", consulting Priesner and Figala (which I added to the References) and other *historiographic*, not *lexicographic*, sources. This goes way beyond sitting at a computer and going from one online dictionary to the next. I discovered information you will not find in a book which is just a dictionary of English or a dictionary of Spanish.

Just in the last week or two, I have reported in the Discussion page of a different article, the article on Arabic loanwords in Spanish, on the following discovery: etymologies from different major dictionaries often disagree with one another. I may have made some of these remarks on this page as well. At any rate, I have argued, repeatedly, against presenting detailed etymologies except in special cases. Specifically with regard to the mass cutting and pasting of etymologies available online, there are two obvious objections: (i) Wikipedia's mission includes trying diligently to confirm information before posting it; but there are many discrepancies between the etymology offered by different online dictionaries for a given word. (ii) It is a waste of time and effort to reproduce this instantly available material -- which is copyrighted material, of course, by the way.

All a contributor need do for a given entry is to cite one -- or more -- dictionaries. Don't put in detailed etymologies unless you are offering information that's hard to access or unless the meaning in today's English diverges from the meaning of the Arabic source word. I, for example, consulted a book on the history of alchemy written in German in order to write the entries for "alcohol" and "kohl", AND, the meaning that "alcohol" has for us, the Arabs did not use it that way centuries ago. Hurmata 20:50, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

2007-03-1 Automated pywikipediabot message

--CopyToWiktionaryBot 08:44, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Genie

I noticed this on here, and I think I should present this excerpt from the Genie page.

Genie is the usual English translation of the Arabic term jinni, but it is not an Anglicized form of the Arabic word, as is commonly thought. The English word comes from French génie, which meant a spirit of any kind, which in turn came from Latin genius, which meant a sort of tutelary or guardian spirit thought to be assigned to each person at birth (see genius). But this has nothing to do with the jinn of Islam, as this might suggest. The Latin word predates the Arabic word jinni, and the two terms have not been shown to be related. The first recorded use of the word in English was in 1655 as geny, with the Latin meaning. The French translators of The Book of One Thousand and One Nights later used the word génie as a translation of jinni because it was similar to the Arabic word both in sound and in meaning; this meaning was also picked up in English and has since become dominant.

I had always assumed that it was a direct loanword; however, this raises some doubt. I saw that it wasn't cited to an online source, so I checked the Online Etymology Dictionary, and sure enough...:

genie 1655, "tutelary spirit," from Fr. genie, from L. genius (see genius); used in Fr. translation of "Arabian Nights" to render Arabic jinni, pl. of jinn "spirit," which it accidentally resembled, and attested in Eng. with this sense from 1748.

My question being: does the actual etymology, which is not related to the Arabic except by coincidence, disqualify the word from presence on this page? Or should it just be noted that the similarity between the two terms has caused a false etymological connection which seems to be apparent to the uninformed?

Considering the mental association between the word and its Arabic meaning (thanks to Arabian Nights and Alladin and such), it might be acceptable to leave it in, but clarification of the unlinked etymology would be necessary. I don't know though, as it seems to be more of a convenient coincidence which crossed the two separate words. Considering the etymology given, it would be more suited on the respective language word list (French or Latin, although a Latin page would be ridiculous).--C.Logan 23:10, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

"My question being . . ." The answer is: basically YES. The point of this page is to identify words which owe their existence to the influence of Arab speaking culture or Arab speaking societies. The only reason to list a word *not* meeting that description would be this situation, that people *suppose* it does meet that description. Hurmata 02:58, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

That makes sense. But I think a note should be added; just because people assume something by majority, doesn't mean it's true. If the word Genie did not actually come to us in English through Arabic influence, but in actually only acquired that relationship later, then it should be noted on the page. Obviously, the current mental image is definitely more akin to the Arabic meaning, but that doesn't mean we should ignore its actual etymology... or else, we're basically spreading false facts, here.--C.Logan 04:08, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Recent off topic or unsubstantiated edits: star names, etc.

1. Somebody is mining the Online Etymological Dictionary for words that are *suspected* of being from Arabic and adding them to the list while *stripping off* words like "perhaps" and "suggested" that indicate the speculative status of the claims for them to be Arabic loanwords. Most of these "perhaps" entries come from the "Online Etymological Dictionary", which cites the same source for them, "Klein 2001". Therefore, whoever this contributor is is too credulous, not applying scrutiny and skepticism to the fact that there is a new work is proposing a bunch of speculative additions to the inventory of Arabic loanwords in English. This new work, "Klein 2001" could be valuable scholarship revealing fresh finds, or it could be incompetent speculation.

2. By the Wikipedia principle of minimizing duplication of information, all information about star names of Arabic origin should be contributed to other articles. Wikipedia has an entire article, List of traditional star names. Star names are also listed in articles linked to at Star#Star designations. I suggest that contributors put their star name etymologies in the "List of traditional star names". As the article is composed right now, it is in table format. You would need to add a column to the table in which to place the etymology.

3. There has also been a stream of off topic entries. Terms from Islamic law and Arabic toponymy DO NOT BELONG. This is not a dictionary of Arabic. This is not a tutorial on Middle Eastern history and culture. This is not a tutorial on Islamic law.

Whoever is inspired by Klein 2001 needs to quit using it as filtered by the "Online Etymological Dictionary" consult Klein 2001 directly and exercise due diligence to make a judgement of how *reliable* it is. In the current climate, it would obviously be chic and/or attention getting to claim Arabic provenance for things not previously thought to have any. Hurmata 15:06, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm on your side here. Ahmedrefat has been adding loads and loads of information- most of which questionably relevant (i.e. star names, Islamic culture terms), or doesn't even match up with the 'cited' source. For instance, several of the references he included, upon inspection, led to dead searches ("No matching terms") on Etymology Online. If this was done intentionally, Ahmedrefat's research methods are questionable. I've taken some effort to remove any additions which I have found to have no support. There should be more clarification on what's included, and your efforts have helped to establish this better.--C.Logan 16:49, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Genie is ultimitly of Arabic organ, it means جن gene it is mentioned in the quran —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.68.25.174 (talk) 23:09, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Algebra

Is algebra really from Arabic? I seriously doubt that, considering it is also a word in Latin!

Yes, it is. There are a lot of entries here based on tenuous evidence and OR (I know, because I spent some time a while back deleting most of it), but algebra is one entry which is not disputed in any way. I may be wrong, but I believe the Latin form is derived from a transliteration of Al-Khowarizmi's work.--C.Logan 22:41, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Marsh

(The following question was added to the article by 70.168.214.227 on 17 June. I have moved it to here as it does not belong on the article page).

"What about marsh? does this come from Hairoglypophs or Cairoglyphs M- Mann, A - Travels, SH - Shallow water. Water can be a boundary (a river) it can even mark a map. Marsh, Maurs, Moors, Mose, it all sounds related. Is it?"

A quick look at any etymological dictionary will show you that 'marsh' comes from Middle English 'meresc' traceable to an Indo-European root. I am not aware that anybody has ever suggested an Arabic connection for it.

The fact that certain words sound similar today is not a reliable indicator that there is any connection between them: you need to examine older forms. I don't know what you mean about Hieroglyphs: There is no connection between hieroglyphs and Arabic, no connection between hieroglyphs and splitting an English word up into its separate sounds, and I don't know where you got those 'meanings' (man, travel etc) from. --ColinFine 23:04, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

amarillo

Amarillo ( a spanish word ) is not of Arabic origin according to all Spanish sources. Theories linking it to Ambar are not generally accepted.

See here: http://culturitalia.uibk.ac.at/hispanoteca/Foro-preguntas/ARCHIVO-Foro/Amarillo.htm

Etymologyonline is not much good, it seems. --Guzman ramirez 22:57, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

The origin of the word woman

The word woman is a contraction of "womb" + "an". The suffix "an" is a popular one in most languages, and particularly, in the arabic, english and french languages. It means "one", as in "anglian", "bulgarian". The plural of "an" is "en", as in "children", "brethren". Now, to go back to the word woman, "womb" seems to come from "umm" in arabic, and the result gives "one mother", and for the plural "womb + en" = women. The same goes for man and men = m'en, meaning "the many ones".

How can this be, you may ask ? The answer is that the story does not start from the time when the arabs were in Spain, but a long long time before, when the phoenicians, speakers of the arabic language, well before the Carthagian epoch, journeyed as far as Ireland and Scotland, in the west and the Caucasian lands, Pakistan, India (hence the Proto-Indo-European link), in the east. It should come then to no surprise that the basque and the caucasian languages have a lot in common. Pheniki (talk) 09:17, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Pheniki, please will you do some basic research in reputable sources before posting? Woman is derived from 'wif-man' (ie. 'woman-human'). It is nothing to do with 'womb', which in the earliest examples was not specifically the uterus, but was also used in the general sense of 'belly'.

As I have said above, the Phoenicians did not speak Arabic, and any claim that they did is simply false. They did indeed travel far, but there is little or no evidence that they left any of their language behind. --ColinFine (talk) 22:30, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Origin of Law

The english word "Law" and the french word "Loi" used to be pronounced in exactly the same way, ie the english way. The origin of the word "Law" is the arabic word "Lawh" meaning the tablets as in "the tablets of the ten commandments" that Moses brought back with him. It was the phoenicians, speakers of the arabic language, who settled in celtic lands (perhaps were the celts themselves !), who transmitted most of words that made up most of what is called now the old and middle english languages.Pheniki (talk) 20:21, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Talk is cheap -- provide a reference for claims.

The Phoenicians had their own language, which was a cousin to ancient Arabic, and neither ancient Arabic itself nor an ancestor or descendant of ancient Arabic. "Pheniki" has named himself after the Phoenicians. For someone naming himself after the Phoenicians to say the Phoenicians spoke Arabic is really disgraceful. Hurmata (talk) 23:13, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Origin of cat

The origin of the english word "cat" is the arabic word "qat", pronounced with the glottoral "q". The old french - probably the "Gaullois", learned it from the english (or the celts), and pronounced it "tchat". The evidence of the original arabic emphatic "t" is still stuck at the tail of the word "chat" whose pronounciation has been modified by decision of the French Académie who "modernised" the french language. In old english, there even existed the word "catte" for the female cat (read it catté with a stress on the tt). This gave the corresponding french word "chatte" (read it tchatta), which corresponds to the arabic word "qattah". For those puzzled, the letter "c" used to be pronounced "tch" in old french, as some communities, living on the coast of the mediterranean, still do. Pheniki (talk) 13:30, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Except that in Arabic it is قِط qeţ not qat --Alif (talk) 16:56, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Where do you get this nonsense, Pheniki? The OED says s.v. 'cat', "The name is common European of unknown origin: found in Lat. and Gr. in 1-4th c., and in the modern langs. generally, as far back as their records go." So yes, its ultimate origin is unknown, and it could indeed be from a Semitic language - even, conceivably Phoenician, though not Arabic as the term is usually used, because the word is too old in European languages for that. But the French word came utterly regularly from Latin 'cattus' (compare 'chanter' from 'cantare') not from English. And there is absolutely nothing about the 't' or 'tt' in the European words that suggests an Arabic 'ṭ' --ColinFine (talk) 21:29, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Move to Wiktionary?

An admirable list, but maybe instead should be moved to Wiktionary? Just for principles... Said: Rursus ☻ 17:28, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

...but you got to convince hundreds of editors who have been editing these 40+ articles - umm, lists. -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up®} 17:48, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Point of interest: As things on Wikipedia tend to do, this article has proven itself to be unexpectedly useful. See the fourth paragraph here. --Kizor 00:39, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Typhoon

Wherever there is the word typhoon, there is some link to Arabic Toufaan, then the claim goes on that it is of a non-Arabic origin; Even the source provided in this page, it claims that toufan طوفان actually means typhoon in Arabic when actually, in Arabic a typhoon is I'saar إعصار. Regardless of whether there is a connection between the two and with all due respect to the source, toufaan in Arabic is not an typhoon but a flood - you can check all available dictionaries and check the Quran, where the word has been used to refer to Noah’s flood!.

Dictionaries give the etymology in the following way (my words after checking several dictionaries): it is derived from the root taafa, "to circulate, to encompass, to surround". Toufaan is heavy rain or heavy flooding or both and it was called so because the water surrounds and encompasses everything. Whether typhoon is of Arabic origin or not, I don't know, but toufan is indeed Arabic and has a different meaning from that mentioned in the article is incorrect.

--Maha Odeh (talk) 07:57, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

The origin of Chance and Chancellor

Most anglo-saxon politiciens and lay-people, like you and I, must be puzzled as to origin of the name "Chacellor" given to the British Minister of Finance and to the German Prime Minister. The answer will be puzzling too, unless you have some knowledge of the arabic language.

As I mentionned in earlier topics, the english language is intimately linked to the language of the phoeniciens who were speakers of arabic (some 6000 years ago ?). Now, let us give our explanation with respect to the origin of the word "chance". The word "chance" comes from the arabic word "kenz", pronounced "chance" by those who pronounce the letter "k" "tch" (like the french cat --> chat), which means "treasure", and when people used to say they did not have a "treasure" (kenz), they meant they did not have a chance (our modern word): "I have no Kenz" = "I have no chance".

As to the word "chancellor", it is just the keeper of the "kenz", commonly named the "Treasuror" or "Trésorier", in french, which luckily for us and history, has been conserved by the British and German state institutions. Pheniki (talk) 20:58, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

And so-called Phoenicians are so completely bamboozled about it that they make up any sort of nonsense they like the sound of. 'Chancellor' and 'chance' have nothing to do with either other, or with Arabic. According to the OED, 'chancellor' is from "L. cancell{amac}rius usher of a law court, whose station was ad cancellos at the bars or grating which separated the public from the judges", and 'chance' from "Late L. cadentia falling, f. cadent- falling, pr. pple. of cad-ěre to fall". --ColinFine (talk) 23:17, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Camera

I removed the following: Camera

       From the Arabic Word Comrah 'قمرة'

because I do not believe it is correct. I think the derivation of the English 'camera' via the Latin 'camera' and Greek 'kamárā' is well-established at this point. Defixio (talk) 03:29, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

I have just removed it again. --ColinFine (talk) 21:57, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Mummy

I've always been led to believe that "mummiya" is the Arabic for bitumen (pitch), not a mummified body; it was applied to Egyptian mummies because bitumen was once believed to have been used in the mummification process. If someone knows this to be true, they should correct the article. 2 November 2008 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.238.110.66 (talk) 15:52, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Satan

Isn't Satan derived from the Arabic (and originally Hebrew) for 'adversary' or 'enemy', not specifically 'evil'? I realise these meanings are related, so someone with more knowledge of Arabic should correct the article if it is actually inaccurate. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.238.110.66 (talk) 09:54, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

The word "Satan" comes from the arabic word "Shatan". The arabic speaking jews have usually difficulties pronouncing the sound "sh", as in the word "shams" (the sun) which is pronounced "sams". Pheniki (talk) 16:18, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

It does not. It comes via Greek from Hebrew. Why on earth should Arabic be involved? And why should Arabic-speaking Jews have difficulty with [ʃ] when both Arabic and Hebrew have the sound? --ColinFine (talk) 22:01, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Why arabic because hebrew is a dead language and it has been relived 19 century —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.68.25.174 (talk) 22:19, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

How is that possibly relevant? "Satan" ws recorded in English in around the year 900, long before Arabic learning reached Western Europe (see the OED). But even if it had been recorded only much later, this would still not be relevant: Biblical Hebrew was studied by Christian scholars throughout Europe for religious reasons. Arabic was unknown in Western Europe until it started to filter in from Moorish Spain, and even then was almost entirely secular, as religious material would have been regarded as heretical. --ColinFine (talk) 23:23, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Meaning of the word "burden"

The original meaning of the word "burden" can be traced back to the arabic word "burda'a" which is the straw-stuffed heavy duty cushion that is usually put on the back of a mule or a donkey. This is supported by the well known expression "I carry a heavy burden on my back". The word "burden" in english seems to be pronounced in the way the morrocan berbers do.Pheniki (talk) 09:32, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Baloney. It can be traced back to the Indo-European root 'bhar-'. No more to do with Arabic than any of Pheniki's wild imaginings. --ColinFine (talk) 22:07, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Abode and hospital

I had a quick look at this article out of interest.

However, using the two sources cited at the bottom of the page, the words 'abode' and 'hospital' don't appear to have a Arabic roots at all. Abode is Middle English from past participle of abide, used as a verbal noun. Abide is from Old English.

Hospital seems to come from the Latin hospes.

I would suggest these need removing. Also, maybe the other words need checking thoroughly to make sure there are no other inaccuracies.

81.151.248.123 (talk) 00:37, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

The words "abode" - whose original meaning is the place of worship and not the home - and "abbot" (the worshipper) come both from the arabic word "obbad" which means place of worship, and the arabic verb, conjugated in the past tense, is "abada" (to worship). This is confirmed further by the presence of the double "bb" which corresponds to the stress on the letter "b", called "shadda" in arabic.Pheniki (talk) 11:52, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

81.151: You are absolutely right. Ignore Pheniki's ignorant ravings. Unfortunately this page is particularly prone to the attentions of a particular kind of editor, who are so sure they are right that they don't bother to check their facts, never mind find references, so it needs regular patrols to weed out the nonsense (which probably doesn't count as vandalism because it is, presumably, well-intentioned). 'Camera' and 'earth' have each been inserted in this list at least twice to my knowledge.

It's really rather funny that Pheniki should have picked on 'abbot', because this is one of the few words that actually is borrowed from a Semitic language: from 'Abba' ('father' - Syriac rather than Arabic) --ColinFine (talk) 22:12, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Origin of the verb "to carve"

"To carve" or the action of "carving", like "carving on wood" or "carving the meat", can be traced back to the arabic word - from the time of the phoenicians who were speakers of arabic - "qarraf", to strip the wood off, from which came the spice name "qarfa" (cinnamon)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinnamon, which is the bark of a tree.Pheniki (talk) 09:52, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Hogwash. It's common Germanic, and probably related to the Greek root 'graph-'. I wonder when the time was of 'the phoenicians who were speakers of Arabic', since history does not give any hint of their existence. --ColinFine (talk) 22:20, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Adobe

The Arabic comes from the Ancient Egyptian tbt meaning "brick". Pamour (talk) 09:04, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Spurious items removed June 14 2009

I've removed the following:

• 'banana' - without evidence, there is no reason to suppose that this came from (or even through) Arabic. The OED says it's from Spanish or Portuguese, from a language of the Congo.
• 'cover' (I'm sure I've removed this one before). Nothing at all to do with Arabic.

Also undid a recent edit adding 'Yasmine' in the entry for 'jasmine'. 'Yasmine' doesn't exist in English except as a name: the English word that is being explicated is 'jasmine', and added an alternative etymology (from the OED for 'mafia'. --ColinFine (talk) 23:09, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Earth is an arabic word

I think the word "earth" should be included in the list. Earth in Arabic (pronounced earth in Arabic too) means inheritance, heritage, legacy, patrimony, succession. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.68.33.100 (talk) 17:29, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

This has been discussed here at least twice (see above). There are a few scholars who argue that 'earth' is ultimately a borrowing from Semitic, though this is not generally accepted by Indo-Europeanists. But even if it is true, it cannot be a loan from Arabic as it is too old: it would have to be from an earlier Semitic language. --ColinFine (talk) 22:41, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry, what you mean that the word "Earth" is so old??? Arabic is more 3000 years old!!!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.68.24.26 (talk) 03:46, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Arabic Language says that the earliest inscriptions are 4th century. If you have reliable sources that demonstrate that Arabic goes back another 1600 years before that, please reference them. Otherwise your unsubstantiated claim will not be accepted. --ColinFine (talk) 23:49, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Spurious entries removed 22 July 2009

A number of entries have been changed by User:140.254.63.2 in the last few minutes. All are unreferenced, and several are wrong. I am removing most of them. Specifically:

• The etymology of 'artichoke' from Arabic al-xurshūf is well-established. The alternative 'ardi shok' is fanciful, and would only make sense if the word had been borrowed directly into English, which it was not.
• 'Aardvark' has nothing whatever to do with Arabic, and is transparently Afrikaans.
• 'Coffin' has nothing to do with Arabic.
• 'Guitar' is from Greek: the same word may well have been borrowed into Arabic.
• There may possibly be some Arabic in the history of 'rice', but more likely not. The English word is from Latin, in turn from Greek, probably from something else, but there is no reason to think Arabic is involved. (The OED says that the Spanish and Portuguese words are from Arabic).
• Sesame is from Latin. Some connection with a Semitic language is likely, but there is no reason to suppose it is Arabic rather than, say, Aramaic.

We say arabic because it is the only language that been spread out by muslim people when came to europe accros spain. --76.68.25.174 (talk) 22:47, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

What has that to do with anything? Some words of Semitic origin entered European languages from Moorish Spain, and hence from Arabic; but others came through Greek or Latin, often in the days long before Islam, when Aramaic was widely spoken in the Middle East, and Arabic, if it even existed, was a minor language of a few nomadic tribes. --ColinFine (talk) 23:53, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

I suggest u look for loan word of arabic orgin in french and spannish so u know why I suggest that those words were borrowed from Arabic and how these languages were influenced by it. I think this answers ur question. --76.68.17.131 (talk) 04:28, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

No. If you think that some of the points I made above are incorrect, it is up to you to provide a different account, with reliable sources. Of course there are words of Arabic origin in French and Spanish, but the words I listed above are not among them (or not demonstrably so: as I say, 'rice' may possibly have been borrowed from Arabic). --ColinFine (talk) 21:21, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

new words

Able: arabic qable قابل meaning able too Pencil: comes from bous means a material(plant) that was used to make pencils in the past it is like wood but hollowed. Atals: Arabic atlas too اطلس and has the same meaning

There are alot of others I will put them soon.

Please do NOT do so unless you have a solid reliable source for the derivation, and give that source. If you add entries without reliable sources they will be removed.

Your guesses and intuitions are not reliable sources. Nor are mine. The OED shows that "able" derives from Latin "habilis", "pencil" from "penicillus". I don't know a word "atals", but if you mean "Atlas" that is classical Greek. It would not surprise me if it had been borrowed into Arabic, but it is too old to have come from Arabic; and in any case it is very unlikely that the Greeks would have used a borrowed name in their pantheon.

Also, please sign your posts (here on the talk page, though not in the article) with four tildes: ~~~~ --ColinFine (talk) 00:02, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Hi,

Here are some new word,

Tall:طويل tawell means tall. solid that u mentioned is also very similar to the word صلب solb and it has the same meaning as solid. Girl: garia جارية means maid

I will put others next time --76.68.25.174 (talk) 22:54, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

These are accidental resemblances (and they are not even very similar).

When you notice a similarity between a word in one language and a word in another, there are various possible reasons:

• They might be related, if the languages derive from a common source (not the case between English and Araic)
• One of the languages has borrowed the word from the other (might be either way)
• It is a complete coincidence.

Without study, you cannot reliably determine which of these explanations applies. Please consult an etymological dictionary before posting your guesses: even if you are right, you need to reference a source when you add material to Wikipedia. --ColinFine (talk) 00:30, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

New words: Noble: Arabic nabeel sherif: arabic shareef

If u find them irrilavent add them to the suggestion catagory —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.68.17.131 (talk) 21:42, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

"Noble" is from Latin "nobilis", and "sherriff" from Old English, from the roots of the modern words "shire reeve". Nothing to do with Arabic. --ColinFine (talk) 20:36, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Removals Jan 2010

Removed from the main list:

• "sesame". The OED says "prob. of oriental origin, but the relation to the Semitic forms (Syriac shāshmå, Jewish Aramaic shumshemā, Arab. simsim) is not clear."

Removed from the 'possibly Arabic' section:

• "camera" (again). The only reference given (Chambers) does not mention Arabic, so the supposed connection with Arabic is unreferenced.
• "date": the OED does not mention a Semitic origin. The source referenced (Online Etymology Dictionary) says "Possibly from a Sem. source (cf. Heb. deqel, Aram. diqla, Arabic daqal "date palm") and assimilated to the Gk. word for "finger." - i.e. it does not say that it derives from Arabic, merely that it might derive from a Semitic source.

I've also rewritten the entry for 'caramel' somewhat.

--ColinFine (talk) 00:50, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Ammonia

User:Seanwal111111 has added 'ammonia', saying "From Egyptian Amun via 8th century chemist Jābir ibn Hayyān". The OED agrees that it goes back ultimately to Amun, but derives it through Greek, not Arabic. Jābir ibn Hayyān mentions that he worked with sal ammoniac, but says nothing about his having named it, indeed gives a quite different Persian word for the salt. I have marked it with {{dubious}}, but unless some reference appears fairly soon I will remove the entry from the page. --ColinFine (talk) 22:41, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

First off, my thanks for your diligent policing of the Arabic loanwords page. My source is the Wikipedia article Ammonia#History and the references given there. I believe it's established that the word came into European alchemy from the Arab alchemists, specifically Jabir, whose use of sal ammoniac is detailed at ref. The same word was in use by the ancient Romans alright, but it's unclear what exactly the ancient Roman word referred to. The online etymology dictionary says: Ammonia was coined in 1782 by Swedish chemist Torbern Bergman for gas obtained from sal ammoniac, salt deposits containing ammonium chloride found near temple of Jupiter Ammon (from Egyptian God Amun) in Libya, from Gk. ammoniakon "belonging to Ammon." The shrine was already ancient in Augustus' day, and the salts were prepared "from the sands where the camels waited while their masters prayed for good omens".ref To be clear, Torbern Bergman didn't take the word from a Roman source -- sal ammoniac had been in use in Europe for centuries at the time. And it's not established that the Roman meaning was "salt deposits containing ammonium chloride", the Arabic meaning. To repeat myself, the European sal ammoniac came from Arabic, while the old Roman sal ammoniac name is not necessarily referring to the same entity, and therefore we can say that sal ammoniac is of Arabic origin, and hence ammonia is too. Seanwal111111 (talk) 23:28, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps I'm being thick, but I have not found anywhere in any of those references which state (or even suggest) that the word came from Arabic. Certainly the substance was well-known to Islamic chemists, including Jabir, but nowhere have I found a suggestion that he called it anything like 'ammoniac': http://www.history-science-technology.com/Articles/articles%2072.htm gives the word 'nushadir' for it. --ColinFine (talk) 00:28, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

You are not being thick, and you make a fair point. That article says "and one quarter of one ratl from Sal ammoniac (nushadir)". If that means that Jabir used the word nushadir for sal ammoniac, the case is closed. And it probably does mean that. However, I found a book at Archive.org that is a text from Jibir in Latin dated 1541 and it contains the word "Sal ammoniacus" (and also "fale ammoniaco", "falis ammoniad"). It also has the word alkali, etc. If Jabir was using the word 'nushadir', it might very well have appeared in the Latin instead of the word ammoniacus. But in truth, one would need to look at the original Arabic to find out what word he was using.

So deletion for being dubious is appropriate until someone can do that. Seanwal111111 (talk) 00:59, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

It would be helpful if you could provide a page reference in the Solidorum de Alchemia. I'm impressed that you found something in there at all! --ColinFine (talk) 07:57, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Well, I found something by "Geber", and in it he talks about Sal ammoniacus (and ʃalis ammoniad; falis = salis in 16thC typography), but I don't know if it's the Arabic Geber or the Pseudo-Geber who was a European writing under the name Jabir circa 1310. At this page at Archive.org, if you click on the .txt file you'll get the raw text which is only about 500 kilobytes. The DjVu file is about 33 megabytes.

I think this is beside the point because I'm pretty sure the writer of Solidorum de Alchemia is Pseudo-Geber, but anyway about two dozen different pages in the book contain the word ammoniacus and the best way to see them all is to go to this page and click "Read online" on the lefthand side, then you'll see a search box in the top righthand side, then enter "ammon" in the search box, then click on any one of the results. (Do not enter ammoniacus as the search term because of typos in the bookscan.) Seanwal111111 (talk) 08:20, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

It seems to me that all you have shown is that a Latin book (either by a European, or a translation of an Arabic work by Jabir) uses the words 'sal ammoniacus'. That no more establishes that 'sal ammoniacus' is from Arabic than Remembrance of Things Past establishes that "things" is from French! --ColinFine (talk) 13:09, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree. By the way while it was looking at that Geber book, I saw the Latin word Marchasita, a mineral whose English spelling is Marcasite. All of the etymology sources say marcasite is taken from Arabic marqashīṭā (which in turn takes it from Aramaic). Marcasite isn't listed on the Wikipedia loanwords page, but since I personally never did hear of marcasite before today (it's a type of pyrite), I won't bother to insert it on the loanwords page. Seanwal111111 (talk) 19:13, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for a good clean argument! --ColinFine (talk) 21:14, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

More Arabic Loanwords to add to the list

At the website SCRIBD.COM I found three lengthy etymology dictionaries available for free download in the .PDF fileformat. Each of the three is more than 500 pages long, each from a different author. Here are the links to them (the first of the three is as least as good as the others and I'd argue it's best): One, Two, Three.

Inside Adobe Acrobat PDF Reader, the "Search" feature (and not the "Find" feature) gives me a list of all occurrences of the word "Arabic" (or "Ar" abbreviation) in each dictionary. On the basis of what's said in these three books, the current Wikipedia article doesn't have major omissions in its list, but it does have a few. All three dictionaries agree that the following words should be included:

Spinach: from Arabic isbanakh, earlier isfānākh, from Pers. isfānākh/aspanakh. It was the Arabs who introduced the spinach into Spain, whence it spread to the rest of Europe.

Serendipity: from Serendip, a fairy tale place, from Sarandib, the Arab word for Sri Lanka

Julep: from Arabic julab [2 of 3 dicts; 3rd dict has no entry]

Fanfare: from Arabic farfar meaning chatterer, garrulous [2 of 3 dicts; 3rd dict has no entry]

Scarlet: from Arabic siqillat meaning "fine cloth" (cloth of various colors but red most common) [2 of 3 dicts; 3rd dict says "inconclusively established"]

Damask: "cloth from Damascus," the city, from Greek Damaskos, from Arabic Dimashq [2 of 3 dicts; 3rd dict silent but 3rd dict says damson plum was damascus/damask plum]

Jumper (what Yankees call sweater): from Arabic jubbah "loose outer garment"

In the preface to the Wikipedia list, the Wikipedia article should say that all loan translations are omitted. Here's an example of a loan translation, which I take from one of the above books. The amygdala is a modern scientific word for a structure in the brain. The word comes from the Greek for almond. The structure has a physical resemblence to an almond. The almond resemblence was first conceived by Arab physicians, who labelled the structure "al-lauzatan", which is almond in Arabic. Europeans later directly translated "al-lauzatan" into Latin by using the Greek word "amygdala" for it. Amygdala is thus an Arabic loan translation or calque, and not a loan word. The word "sine" -- as in sine, cosine and tangent -- is an amusing example of another Arabic loan translation. As reported in two of the above books, sine comes from Latin "sinus" meaning a fold in a garment, or a bend, or curve (seen in the English word sinuous). However, it really comes from an incorrect translation into Latin of an Arabic geometry text, in which Arabic jiba "chord of an arc, sine" (from Skt. jiva "bowstring") was confused with Arabic jaib "bundle, bosom, fold in a garment." Quote: "As in the case of many other mathematical terms, English is indebted to Arabic for sine. The word sine itself was borrowed from Latin sinus ‘curve, fold, hollow’. In postclassical times sinus also came to denote the ‘fold of a garment’, and it was mistakenly used to translate Arabic jayb ‘chord of an arc’, a doppelganger of Arabic jayb ‘fold of a garment’." Another technical Arabic loan translation is dura mater. Quoting Wikipedia: the dura mater is the outermost of the three layers of the meninges surrounding the brain and spinal cord. It has been described as "tough and inflexible" and "leather-like". The other two meningeal layers are the pia mater and the arachnoid mater. In Latin, mater = mother, and dura = hard. Quoting the etymology dictionary: c.1400, from Medieval Latin dura mater cerebri, literally "hard mother of the brain," a loan-translation of Arabic umm al-dimagh as-safiqa, literally "thick mother of the brain." "In Arabic, the words 'father,' 'mother,' and 'son' are often used to denote relationships between things."[Klein] —Preceding unsigned comment added by Seanwal111111 (talk • contribs) 07:41, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

It seems to me that dictionary 1 is self-published, and therefore inadmissible as a reference for WP. The others are OK.

Do you really think it's likely that anybody is going to put calques in the list? --ColinFine (talk) 00:18, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Dictionary #1 is self-published, true, but it's very nearly the very same text as what's at www.etymonline.com (the latter adds a smallish amount of new material into the former). The Wikipedia page is already citing etymonline.com. BTW Dictionary #1 states that one of its primary sources is An Etymological Dictionary by Ernest Weekley, published 1921. Weekley's 850-page dictionary is downloadable at Archive.org at [9].

My bad ammonia insertion might've been a calque, but that's beside the point. What I intended to suggest above is that some considerable number of Arabic words/concepts -- don't know how many -- have entered into English as calques and the article about the loanwords should simply say so. Seanwal111111 (talk) 08:47, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Mafia

Just a note on the expectation of Seanwal111111 (talk · contribs) about the OED's etymology for mafia in this edit:

[< Italian mafioso, probably re-formed (as if < mafia MAFIA n. + -oso -OUS suffix) < mafiuso (1862 in G. Rizzotto I mafiusi della Vicaria) probably < Italian regional (Sicily) mafiusu, further etymology uncertain and disputed. Italian regional (Sicily) mafiusu is perhaps a blend of marfusu scoundrel and marfiuni, marpiuni cheat (Italian marpione; ultimately < French morpion MORPION n.); Italian regional (Sicily) marfusu (Italian †malfusso rascal; 15th cent.) is < Spanish marfuz renegade, traitor (1330) < Arabic marfūḍ outcast, reprobate, passive participle of rafaḍa refuse to accept, reject.]

–Syncategoremata (talk) 22:56, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

I take it you're quoting from the complete OED. The concise OED says "ORIGIN Italian, originally meaning ‘bragging’". I can't see how the OED can connect 'bragging' to the cheating scoundrel meaning. The Random House Dictionary at [10] says "Sicilian: orig., elegance, bravura, courage; of obscure origin." I can't see that carried back into a scoundrel sense either. Etymonline.com says "from Italian (Sicilian) mafia "boldness, bravado," probably from Arabic mahjas "aggressive, boasting, bragging." Which is a totally different proposal from Arabic marfūḍ. (translate.google.com says marfud = marfoud = مرفوض = rejected [11]).

I just modified the list's entry for Mafia in light of the above. If you're unhappy with it or anything else please go ahead and change it. Seanwal111111 (talk) 00:07, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, yes, that etymology is from the complete OED. And your entry for mafia looks very fine to me. (Though I have to agree with your comment here: exactly why the OED thinks there is the connection it postulates is beyond me.)

Many thanks. –Syncategoremata (talk) 20:39, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Addendum for botanical names

I've just removed the sentence "Some of the names classed as ancient Mesopotamian would've been in ancient Arabic too, while others would've been transmitted to Arabic at various later times through Syriac, Aramaic, Hebrew, Persian and perhaps some through Greek." from this section. I wrongly started discussing this on Seanwal111111's talk page but have now come here to explain the deletion.

In the previous sentence, Seanwal cites information directly from his source, but I contend that the sentence I removed is original research: WP:OR says "The term "original research" ... also refers to any analysis or synthesis by Wikipedians of published material, where the analysis or synthesis advances a position not advanced by the sources.

The sentence also contains examples of contractions, which I would have expanded if I had not removed the whole sentence. --ColinFine (talk) 22:43, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

And I, Seanwal111111, deny that it's original research. Colin Fine said in the other thread: "The source [Martin Levey's book] didn't say anything about Ancient Arabic. It does say that some of them [medieval Arabic botanical names] came through Syriac, Aramaic, Hebrew, Persian, and perhaps Greek, but it doesn't say anything at all about the remainder: you have made that up." You haven't looked at the source, I believe. Here are a few quotes for you from it:

Page 64: "The Arab transmission of ideas and technology in ancient and medieval times is difficult to study. However, ancient Semetic scientific material, although not often found in literary works, did find its way to the Arabs by means of oral transmission, largely through commercial intercourse and the apprenticeship system. Partial evidence for this may be gleaned from the terminological richness of pre-Islamic oral literature.... ... [medieval] Arabic as, myrtle, from Akkadian asu; [medieval] Arabic baṣal, onion, from Akkadian biṣru; [medieval] Arabic turmus, lupine, from Sumerian TAR.MUS...." Same book page 57: "A large number of Akkadian botanical names were used by the Muslims. A few of these include the Arabic shibit or shibbat, "dill", cognate to the Akkadian shibittu; Arabic ghar, "sweet bay", related to Akkadian eru; Arabic hummas, "chickpea", to Akkadian humushu"; and Arabic athl, "tamarisk gall", to Akkadian ashlu". This oral literature, whose importance is not as yet realized because of a general neglect by historians of the science of philology, was of great importance in botany...." Same book page 60: "The Arabic word for mustard, khardal, is cognate to the Akkadian khaldappanu or khardinnu. The Sumerian is KHAR.KHAR. In Akkadian, mustard is also... ar sanapu.... The Arabic cognate is sinf...."

I am going to restore the deleted text unless you can explain and specify what's OR in it. Seanwal111111 (talk) 23:19, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

The word LILAC

At the moment the page is saying English "lilac" is from Arabic ليلك līlak, but it is not saying what the Arabic word meant. "Lilac" is almost the only word on the list with that status ("cork" is another one). I haven't been able to find any source citing an attestation of the word in Arabic except at a date that's considerably after the word got established in the Western languages. I believe the word is not from Arabic at all, in view of what's said about it at http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=2006145

A summary of the main points at that wordreference.com link are: (1) There is hard evidence that the lilac plant originated in the Balkans (particularly in higher elevation areas in the Balkans). (2) Lilac plants "are natives, mountain dwellers, of the colder regions requiring a length of cold weather to set their fat buds for bloom." (quoting http://books.google.com/books?id=rYatjOH-LbAC). They don't thrive in Arabic-speaking lands because the winters aren't cold enough. (3) The historical record of the introduction of the plant to Western Europe is that it came from gardens in Istanbul in the late 16th century. The early records are in Austria and northern France (and not Spain). (4) The plant was not called "lilac" during its introduction to Western Europe in the late 16th century. The "lilac" word dates from 1605 in French and this appears to be the earliest attestation of the word in any Western language. (The Spanish word "lilac" is from French according to the official dictionary of the Spanish language). (5) In French and the other Western languages, the use of "lilac" as a color doesn't happen until more than a century after the use of "lilac" as a garden plant, and the color sense is a derivative of the plant sense. (5) No etymology source I've seen is citing an instance of the word in Arabic before the early 19th century. (6) The Greek word for indigo is "loulaki" and the Albanian for indigo "llullaq". Because the lilac plant originated in the Balkans, a word semantically and phonetically similar to loulaki | llullaq in use in the Balkans is a candidate for the word's origin. But the word's origin is basically obscure.

Given all the above, I propose to move the entry for "lilac" from the section headed "Loanwords listed in alphabetical order" to the section headed "Words that may (or may not) be Arabic loanwords". There is one problem with this proposition, which you can see in the first paragraph at http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=2006145. As I said already, the entry for "lilac" at the moment it is not saying what the supposed Arabic word meant. My review of many etymology sources leaves me unable to add that piece of info. I take that to be another sign of the weakness of the supposed Arabic ancestry. Seanwal111111 (talk) 20:29, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Deletion of additions made today by Mood Sally

Mood Sally added the following 13 words on 21 Aug 2011 in good faith and I deleted them. An explanation for the deletions is called for.

The following three words are not of Arabic ancestry according to the etymology dictionaries.

cumin : كمّون kammūn.

cable: كَبْل kabl, meaning "thick rope" and "huge constraint".

camel: جمل jamal, pronounced gamal in Egypt and Yemen.

The following five words are rarely used in English, their English usage is usually confined to Arabic or Middle Eastern historical or cultural contexts, and English has other words that are usually used in their stead. Many other rare words that belong in the same category are already excluded from the list.

casbah: قصبة qaṣabah, meaning "palace's center", "most of the city", and/or "fort's midmost".

fakir : فقير faqīr, meaning "poor" person or "beggar", and used for describing Sufi ascetic dervishes

fellah : فلاح fallāḥ, meaning "farmer" and "peasant"

dragoman : ترجمان tarjumān meaning "translator" and "interpreter"

bint: بنت bint, meaning "girl", or "daughter"

______________________

caliph: خليفة khalīfa, meaning "successor" or "representative".

Caliph is already mentioned under sultan, where it is noted that the use of the word in English is largely confined to Middle Eastern history.

Gibraltar : جبل طارق Jabal Ṭāriq, meaning "Tariq's mountain", named after Tariq ibn Ziyad

Gibraltar is a proper geographic name, and the list excludes such names.

betelgeuse: إبط الجوزاء Ibţ al-Jawzā', meaning "the armpit of the Orion", a name of a bright star.

Betelguese is a star name, and the list excludes such names.

camise: قميص qamīṣ, meaning "shirt"

Camise is very rarely used in English, as reflected by the fact that it doesn't have a page a Wikipedia. The word Chemise meaning shirt is common enough in English, and does have a page at Wikipedia. But Chemise is not from Arabic -- see http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/chemise

calabash : قرع يابس qarʿa yabisa, meaning "dry gourd"

English Calabash is from Spanish. The Spanish is of uncertain ancestry. Arabic ancestry is possible. The word is not very rare in English, and its meaning does not belong in one of the excluded categories, so this word could be included under "words that may (or may not) be Arabic loanwords". Seanwal111111 (talk) 20:38, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Size split???

Support - Article is over 100 kB and should be split. Thoughts???--Jax 0677 (talk) 20:08, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Oppose - See Wikipedia:Article size. For this article, (1) the readable prose size is only about 75KB, which is not much bigger than the recommended size for a full article which is 50KB, and (2) It's a list, and lists are not subject to the 50KB recommendation, because readability a key criterion, and readability is easier for lists, and breaking up the list diminishes the readability of the list overall. This list is not like a list of butterfly names or a list of passerine bird names. The list as a whole has information as a whole, which would be diminished if the list were to be split up. Seanwal111111 (talk) 21:05, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

As a separate point, Wikipedia:Article size policy says: "As browsers have improved, there is no need for haste in splitting an article when it starts getting large. Sometimes an article simply needs to be big to give the subject adequate coverage. If uncertain... start a discussion on the talkpage.... If the discussion makes no progress consider adding one of the split tags in order to get feedback from other editors." Editor Jax 0677 has inserted the split tag on his own right away, without engaging in discussion first, and without giving any argument for why the article should be split, other than the fact that the article is a large one. I think it was premature to have inserted the split tag. Seanwal111111 (talk) 21:05, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Here's a copy of what it says at Wikipedia:Article size: Some useful rules of thumb for splitting articles, and combining small pages:

Readable prose size	What to do
> 100 kB	Almost certainly should be divided
> 60 kB	Probably should be divided (although the scope of a topic can sometimes justify the added reading time)
> 50 kB	May need to be divided (likelihood goes up with size)
< 40 kB	Length alone does not justify division
< 1 kB	If an article or list has remained this size for over a couple of months, consider combining it with a related page. Alternatively, why not fix it by adding more info? See Wikipedia:Stub.

Please note:

These rules of thumb only apply to readable prose (found by counting the words) and not to wiki markup size (as found on history lists or other means). It also applies somewhat less to disambiguation pages and naturally do not apply to redirects. They also apply less strongly to list articles, especially if splitting them would require breaking up a sortable table.

Oppose. No compelling rationale has been made for shortening the list, and splitting it into subpages makes it more difficult to use. Also, Jax 0677 hasn't given the discussion any time to develop, so his move was premature. --Akhilleus (talk) 19:48, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

It is clear that there is no concensus to split. In any case, if the article is to split then it should be 1 letter/article with nav templates etc. Op47 (talk) 18:56, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

When the list is all on one page it is 75 KB of readable prose. That is pushing up against the upper limits of the Wikipedia:Article size guidelines. But still at 75 KB presented as a list it remains within the article size guidelines strictly speaking. To those who wish to split the article into several smaller pages I ask: what exactly is the advantage? Why is the list on one page a worse thing than the list split up onto several pages? Why is a split up list better than one long list? Seanwal111111 (talk) 23:59, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Post-fact comment. The list was split after being greatly expanded as a result of the listification and deletion of several loanword categories. It would have become some 300k in size, rendering it impossible for anyone using dial-up to use it. It has been split in the same way that the equivalent list of French loanwords in English was already split (for the same reasons). Grutness...wha? 02:00, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

By the way, I notice that some of your edits removed substantial and deliberate cross-referencing Seanwal. Please put it back, as it becomes necessary when a list such as this is split. Grutness...wha? 02:03, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

When the page is split up into multiple pages, the load time for a dial-up reader is slower for three reasons. First, the split up version is longer by 70,000 bytes. The byte size of the current split-up version (split up into seven pages) is 32,886 + 65,388 + 52,871 + 50,117 + 59,638 + 51,225 + 43,726 = 350,000 bytes. The non-split-up version is 280,000 bytes. The extra bytes in the split-up version are purely duplications of material on the different pages, duplications which are absent when there's no split-up. Second, when the list is read across seven pages instead of one, there must be six additional loads of Wikipedia scripts, Wikipedia stylesheets, and other Wikipedia headers. Third, the internet broswers write the text to the reader's screen incrementally as the browsers recieve the text incrementally over the Net, which means a reader with a slow dial-up connection can begin reading an article before all the text has been downloaded, and thus a lengthy article text's size doesn't delay the dial-up reader from reading. What delays the dial-up reader is that the Wikipedia page header for each page is about 10 Kilobytes and this must be downloaded by the browswer from the internet for each page before the reader can see any text on the page. In addition to the 10 Kilobytes in the page header itself, the page header contains links to Wikipedia scripts and stylesheets. The scripts and stylesheets may be loaded either from the cache on the disk on the reader's machine or from the internet. The broswer is usually able to load them from the local cache, but there is some delay involved because typically the browser verifies that what's in the local cache is up-to-date, which involves sending a short query across the internet and waiting for the reply.

For those page-loading reasons, someone who wants to read the list with a slow dial-up connection would prefer to have the list all on one page, not split up.

Question: Is the concern for someone with a slow dial-up connection the only concern you have about the list being all on one page? do you have some other reason for thinking it is better to present the list split-up on seven pages rather than on one page? Seanwal111111 (talk) 21:50, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

To tackle your first and third points - as I explained, the list was substantially extended, which is why it was split. As one list it would have been close to 300k, which is beyond the ability of dial-up servers to load at all. I urge you to again look at WP:Article size, which covers this briefly under the "technical issues" section. As such, it became impossible for it to remain as one list. I take it you have not tried to load a page that size via dial-up. It freezes the browser - the whole page never loads and the user often has to force a quit on the program and reinitialise it. On occasions it will cause their entire computer to freeze and require a reboot. For those reasons, someone on dialup would be completely unable to read the article as a single page.

As to your second point, yes, there is duplication of material. But you seem to be under the impression that the average reader would want to look at the entire list, rather than just at one item on it. Many readers would likely onl be interested at individual items, and as such there is likely to be far less load on Wikipedia than there is with a long list. Not that the difference either way would be likely to cause problems for Wikipedia.

Dial-up usage is not the only reason for the split, though it is a major one. Many other list articles have been split across numerous pages, for ease of reading. With broadband, the time taken to reach a particular item on a large list can be far longer than the time needed to open a smaller file and find an item on it. Similarly, if more than one item is required, it is quicker to open two separate small files and search them than it is to open one large file and search in it twice. It is also easier to edit several smaller files than it is to edit one large file.

Given that it's easier for broadband users, easier for editors, and the only viable option for dial-up users, and well beyond the appropriate limit of 100k for an article to be split – as you pointed out yourself, quoting WP:Article size – making the article into several shorter lists is the only adequate or acceptable option. Again, from WP:Article size, comes the comment "Long stand-alone list articles are split into subsequent pages alphabetically, numerically, or subtopically." That is exactly what we have here, a very long stand-alone list article, and that is exactly what has been done with it. Grutness...wha? 00:31, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

You are totally mistaken about what happens using a slow dial-up connection. It is crystal clear to me you do not actually try it. I am writing this right now using a dial-up connection of 34.6 kilobits per second (4,325 bytes per second). Everything is behaving as it does with a broadband connection except (1) it's slow and (2) some of the Wikipedia stylesheet scripts are not being loaded. The omission of the stylesheet scripts makes the loading less slow, and it is presumably a deliberate act on the part of Wikipedia to make page-loading less slow for dial-up users, with the result that any page's layout style is "more basic" and "less fancy". The page in the basic style contains everything of substance that's present in the fancy style -- with just in a more basic style of presentation of it. I used both the Firefox browser and the Internet Explorer browser to view this. Regarding the list of Arabic loanwords in English, the full list is in the version of the article dated 30 Apr 2013, which is at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_English_words_of_Arabic_origin&oldid=552630962. I went to that long page when connected to the internet with the slow dial-up connection. Then I clicked on "Edit" to edit the full list. Then in the editor I clicked on "Show preview". The resulting page presents a preview of the full list in HTML markup, together with the edit window containing the full list as editable text. There are no problems. I ask you to check this for yourself to verify that what you said above about dial-up is completely erroneous. (While you're checking it, notice also that the browser loads the page incrementally as the data is received incrementally from across the internet. The way to observe that is to scroll down to the bottom of the page as it's loading and before it has completely loaded, and watch it load more by watching the scroll bar on the outer righthand side of the broswer's window -- it automatically moves upwards if you moved it to the bottom of the window.)

In another paragraph above you say: "If more than one item is required, it is quicker to open two separate small files and search them than it is to open one large file and search in it twice." That is completely erroneous too, unless you're talking about searching with your own eyes, and the latter would be a silly thing to do because (no matter what the page size) the browser's text search function is far more reliable and far faster.

You also say above: "It is also easier to edit several smaller files than it is to edit one large file." I've no clue what you have in mind when you say that. Please explain. I hope you do not fail to notice that in the current state with seven separate pages, each page has a duplicate of the section headed "notes about the list". If you wanted to edit that section, you'd have to reduplicate your edit seven times. The same goes for the duplicated footnotes, and all the other 70,000 bytes of duplications. An editor who improves or disimproves something on one page may not be aware that the same thing is also on six other pages, or may not be willing to go through the tedium of repeating the change on the other pages, and the result would be that the seven pages are inconsistent with each other in their duplicated matter. Seanwal111111 (talk) 20:12, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

You are totally mistaken about what happens using a slow dial-up connection. It is crystal clear to me you do not actually try it. I used to, regularly, and still have to frequently. I can only assume that your browser is one of the lucky few that has less of a problem with this. This is the entire reason why the guidelines - which you introduced to this discussion - about file size are in place. If a file is over 100k in size, it should almost certainly be split. The larger the file, the more imperative this need becomes. At 280k, this file was far too big for many browsers to load on dial-up. As such, this file needed to be split.

In another paragraph above you say: "If more than one item is required, it is quicker to open two separate small files and search them than it is to open one large file and search in it twice." Yes, and I stand by that, because it is not "erroneous", it is a fact for many users who are unable to open very large files at all. As such, this file needed to be split.

You also say above: "It is also easier to edit several smaller files than it is to edit one large file." I've no clue what you have in mind when you say that. Well, basically, I mean that it is also easier to edit several smaller files than it is to edit one large file. On dial-up, for many browsers (though perhaps not for the one you use) it is impossible to edit very large articles. This is one of the reasons why the guidelines for splitting articles above 100k is in place. As such, this file needed to be split. As for the "tedium of repeating a change", that is easily fixed by turning it into either a subpage or template such as {{arabenglnotes}}.

I repeat the original point. The list was greatly expanded as a result of the listification of a large number of categories, which I and several other admins were involved in performing as a result of consensus at a WP:CFD discussion. The size that the list was likely to become was so large that it would have caused considerable problems for a large number of users - including rendering it impossible for a substantial number of users to read the list at all, let alone edit it. The only appropriate actions in such circumstance were either to greatly reduce the information contained on the list or split the list. Losing information was seen as a poor choice. As such, this file needed to be split. Some users, such as yourself, might have the minor inconvenience of having to look through more lists, but this is definitely a minor inconvenience compared with not being able to access the list at all. Grutness...wha? 01:32, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Earlier above on this page I already quoted from the Wikipedia:Article size policy statement: "As browsers have improved, there is no need for haste in splitting an article when it starts getting large. And the statement adds: "Sometimes an article simply needs to be big to give the subject adequate coverage." In contrast to that statement, Grutness states above that some browsers are unable to handle bigger filesizes. Grutness's statement is false. It's false, unless you're talking about browsers of the early 2000s vintage. With respect to any of the broswers of relatively recent years it's false. To experience the problem that Grutness is talking about above, you'd have to use a browser version dating from before roughly year 2005, which virtually nobody is doing anymore. The Article size policy statement I quoted is cognizant of this.

Another thing Grutness says above is that Internet browsers with a fast Internet connection are somehow exempted from the problems that he is talking about and you'd have to have a slow connection to see the problems. I'd like to repeat that when you have a slow connnection everything behaves in the browser as it does with a fast connection except (1) it's slow and (2) some of the Wikipedia stylesheet scripts are not being loaded (as I explained above). The browser has the same capabilities and uses the same set of procedures no matter how fast or slow the Internet connection speed is, and so Grutness's talk about problems with slow connections is incoherent. Seanwal111111 (talk) 12:43, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a dictionary

This list breaks the WP:Wikipedia is not a dictionary rule. It should be removed.Provocateur Provocateur (talk) 00:29, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

If you think that then you should nominate the article for deletion. Op47 (talk) 18:56, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

This, and all similar articles on the etymological origins of words, are about a concept: that of linguistic origin. They are not about the meaning and/or usage of the individual words on the list. As such, they don't violate the policy. Grutness...wha? 06:02, 7 June 2013 (UTC)