Some english words of arabic origin

Of course, you already knew of the existence of so-called “loanwords” in English, meaning words which are originally French, German, Spanish, etc.

But were you actually aware that several of them also come from ARABIC?

IN SCIENCE AND MATH:

• ALCHEMY and CHEMISTRY (الكيميـــــــــاء.)

• ALCOHOL (الكُحُـــــــــول.)

• ALGEBRA (الجبــر)

• ALGORITHM (خوارزم)

• ALKALINE (القلوي: Meaning “non-acid, basic.”)

• ALMANAC (المنــــــاخ: Literally meaning “climate”)

• AVERAGE (From Old French avarie, itself from the Arabic term عوارية, meaning “damaged goods”, from عور meaning “to lose an eye.”)

• AZIMUTH (السمــــــــت: This concept is used in several fields, such as الفلك/astronomy، هندسة الطيران/aerospace engineering، and فيزياء الكم/quantum physics.)

• CIPHER (صِفـــــــــــــــــــــــــــر: The term “cipher” is now mostly applied in cryptography—

• ELIXIR (الإكسيــــــــــــــر: Something like a “syrup”—also an Arabic term, possibly borrowed from Persian.)

• NADIR (نظيـــــــــــــر: It is the opposite of the zenith.)

• SODA (صـــــــــودا.)

• ZENITH (سمت الرأس: Literally the “azimuth of the head”، it is the opposite of the “nadir.”)

• ZERO (same as “cipher.”)

Names of many stars and constellations:

(Altair: الطَّائـــــــــر meaning “the bird”; Betelgeuse: بيت الجــــــوزاء, meaning “the House of the Gemini”; Deneb: ذنب meaning “tail”; Fomalhaut: فم الحوت which means “the mouth of the Pisces”, Rigel: رِجـــــــل meaning “foot”, it stands for رجل الجبَّار, or the “foot of the Titan”, Vega: الواقع meaning “the Falling”, refers to النسر الواقع، meaning “the falling eagle”, etc.)

TECHNICAL TERMS (ENGINEERING, MILITARY, BUSINESS, COMMODITIES, etc.)

• ADMIRAL (أميــــــــر الرحلة, meaning commander of the fleet, or literally “of the trip”)

• ADOBE (الطوب: meaning a “brick.” Next time you use an Adobe Acrobat product, you will remember that Adobe is originally Arabic!)

• ALCOVE (القبة: meaning “the vault”, or “the dome”)

• AMBER (عنبر: Anbar, “ambergris.”)

• ARSENAL (Do fans of F.C. Arsenal today, including those living in the Arab world, know where the name of their favorite team came from? دار الصناعــــــــــــــــة : “manufacturing house”)

• CALIBER (قـــــــالب: meaning “mold”)

• CANDY (from قندي, itself from Persian for “hard candy made by boiling cane sugar”)

• CORK (القورق)

• COFFEE (قهوة: For long snubbed by Europeans as the “wine of the infidels”—that is, many centuries before the age of Starbucks and instant coffee!)

• COTTON (قُطْـــــــــن)

• GAUZE (either from قَــــــــــزّ, meaning “silk”, or from غَــــــــزّة, “Gaza”, the Palestinian city.)

• GUITAR (just as LUTE, العود, a musical instrument known to Europeans through the Arabic قيثارة, itself possibly borrowed from a word of Ancient Greek.)

• HAZARD (الزّهر: “the dice”—Think of an Arabic TV series hazardly titled “The Dukes of Al-Azhar”…)

• LAZULI (As in “Lapis Lazuli”, لاژورد: Arabic word for a semi-precious stone famous for its intense blue color. The Arabic word is said to come from a Persian city where the stone was mined.)

• MASCARA (Just as with the English “masquerade” and the French “mascarade“, mascara comes from the Arabic word مسخرة, an event during which people wear masks, such as carnivals.)

• MATTRESS (مطـــــــــــــــــــرح.)

• MONSOON (موسم: Arabic for “season.”)

• MUMMY (مومياء: Originally from Persian root “موم”, meaning “wax”.)

• RACQUET (As in a “tennis racket”. Some point to an Arabic origin of Tennis. The word racket comes the Arabic word “راحـــــــة”, as in “راحـــــة اليد”, meaning the “palm of the hand.”)

• REAM (as in a “ream of paper”, it comes from Arabic رزمة, meaning a “bundle.”)

• SAFARI (سفـــــــر: “travel”—As in Apple’s Safari web browser)

• SASH (شــــــــاش.)

• SATIN (زيتــــــــــــوني: “Olive-like”, perhaps related to modern Tsinkiang in Fukien province, southern China.)

• SOFA (الصُفــــــــة)

• TALCUM (التلك)