List of English words of Arabic origin (A–B)

The following English words have been acquired either directly from Arabic or else indirectly by passing from Arabic into other languages and then into English. Most entered one or more of the Romance languages before entering English.

To qualify for this list, a word must be reported in etymology dictionaries as having descended from Arabic. A handful of dictionaries have been used as the source for the list. Words associated with the Islamic religion are omitted; for Islamic words, see Glossary of Islam. Archaic and rare words are also omitted. A bigger listing including many words very rarely seen in English is available at Wiktionary dictionary.

Loanwords listed in alphabetical order

 * List of English words of Arabic origin (A-B)
 * List of English words of Arabic origin (C-F)
 * List of English words of Arabic origin (G-J)
 * List of English words of Arabic origin (K-M)
 * List of English words of Arabic origin (N-S)
 * List of English words of Arabic origin (T-Z)
 * List of English words of Arabic origin: Addenda for certain specialist vocabularies

A

 * admiral
 * أمير amīr, military commander, also Emir. Amīr is common in medieval Arabic as a commander on land (not sea). In medieval Latin it has lots records as a specifically Muslim military leader or emir. A Latin record of a different kind comes from Sicily in 1072, the year the Latins defeated the Arabs in Sicily at the capital city Palermo. In that year, after about 300 years of Arabic rule in Sicily, a new military governing official at Palermo was assigned as "Knight, to be for the Sicilians the amiratus", where -atus is a Latin grammar suffix. This title continued in mainly non-marine use over the next century among the Latins at Palermo, usually spelled am[m]iratus; spelled amiraldus in year 1113 where -aldus is a Latin suffix that functions much the same as -atus; ammiral year 1112 influenced by Latin suffix -alis. In 1178 (and earlier) the person holding the title amiratus at Palermo was put in charge of the navy of the Kingdom of Sicily. After that start, the use of the word to mean an Admiral of the Sea was taken up in the maritime republic of Genoa starting in 1195 as amirato, and spread throughout the Latin Mediterranean in the 13th century. Medieval Latin word-forms included ammiratus, ammirandus, amirallus, admiratus, admiralius, while in late medieval French and English the usual word-forms were amiral and admiral. The insertion of the letter 'd' was undoubtedly influenced by allusion to the word admire, a classical Latin word.


 * adobe : الطوب al-tūb | at-tūb, the brick. The word is in a number of medieval Arabic dictionaries meaning "brick". The Arabic dictionary of Al-Jawhari dated about year 1000 made the comment that the Arabic word had come from the Coptic language of Egypt. In European languages the early records are in medieval Spanish spelled adoba | adova and adobe with the same meaning as today's Spanish adobe, "sun-dried brick". Other cases of Arabic 't' becoming medieval Spanish 'd' include es:Ajedrez, es:Algodón, es:Badana, es:Badea. The word entered English from Mexico in the 18th and 19th centuries.


 * afrit : عفريت ʿifrīt, an ancient demon popularized by the 1001 Arabian Nights tales.  The word is also used in the Quran in chapter 27 verse 39. It refers to a type of jinn.


 * albatross : The medieval Arabic source-word was probably الغطّاس al-ghattās  which literally meant "the diver", and meant birds who caught fish by diving, and sometimes meant the diving waterbirds of the pelecaniform class, including cormorants.Several bird-names in Spanish are established as having entered Spanish from Arabic during the medieval era. They include today's Spanish alcaraván = "curlew bird" from medieval Arabic al-karawān = "curlew bird" and today's Spanish zorzal = "thrush and similar bird" from medieval Arabic zurzūr = "starling bird". The late medieval Spanish alcatraz = "seafish-catching large bird", such as pelican or cormorant or gannet bird, is presumed by everybody to be from an Arabic word. But it is not very clear what the Arabic word was. On looking at candidate words, Arabic al-ghattās = "the diver" (from verb غطس ghatas, to dive in water), implying a diving pelecaniform bird, is the one favored today by the dictionaries Concise OED, American Heritage, Merriam-Webster, CNRTL.fr, and some others. Al-ghattās is a fish-catching diving bird in chapters about birds by Ahmad al-Qalqashandi (died 1418) (Ref), Yaqut al-Hamawi (died 1229) and Zakariya al-Qazwini (died 1283) (Ref). In modern Arabic al-ghattās is a grebe (a diving waterbird of a different class) and also means a human skin-diver. This candidate word has the problem that the phonetic alterations involved in moving from al-ghattās to alcatraz are irregular and unusual: In Iberian Romance loanwords from Arabic, a conversion of gh- to c- is very rare, and an insertion of -r- is uncommon. The candidate favored by older dictionaries (including the dictionaries by Devic 1876, Skeat 1888, Weekley 1921) is Arabic al-qādūs = "bucket of a water wheel (hopper)", which certainly became Portuguese alcatruz well-documented with the same meaning, which in turn, it is speculatively proposed, became Portuguese and Spanish alcatraz = "a pelican with a bucket-like beak". One problem with this idea is that, although alcatraz has records meaning pelican, it also has records meaning cormorant and in the 16th century frigatebird and also gannet, which are large diving seabirds without a bucket-like beak. (These records are acknowledged by Devic (1876) and his followers). Moreover the word's early records have no highlighting of a bucket-like beak. The very earliest known record, which is in Spanish in year 1386, says "birds that maintain themselves on fish such as sea-eagles and alcatraces and other birds of the sea", and a relatively early record in Spanish at around 1440 speaks of "...pigeons and vultures and alcatrazes" – cited in Los Arabismos del Castellano en la Baja Edad Media, by Maíllo Salgado, year 1998. More early records in Spanish are at CORDE. The fact that al-qādūs (the waterwheel bucket) is certainly the parent of alcatruz (the waterwheel bucket) lends phonetic support to the view that al-ghattās can be the parent of alcatraz. From this or some other Arabic word, late medieval Spanish has alcatraz meaning pelecaniform-type large diving seabird. From the Spanish, it entered English in the later 16th century as alcatras with the same meaning, and it is also in Italian in the later 16th century as alcatrazzi with the same meaning. The albatrosses are large diving seabirds that are only found in the Southern Hemisphere and the Pacific Ocean regions. Beginning in the 17th century, every European language adopted "albatros" with a 'b' for these birds, the 'b' having been mobilized from Latinate alba = "white".


 * alchemy, chemistry : الكيمياء al-kīmīāʾ, alchemy and medieval chemistry, and especially "studies about substances through which the generation of gold and silver may be artificially accomplished". In Arabic the word had its origin in a Greek alchemy word that had been in use in the early centuries AD in Alexandria in Egypt in Greek. The Arabic word entered Latin as alchimia in the 12th century and was widely circulating in Latin in the 13th century. In medieval Latin alchimia was strongly associated with the quest to make gold out of other metals but the scope of the word also covered the full range of what was then known about chemistry and metallurgy. Late medieval Latin had the word-forms alchimicus = "alchemical" and alchimista = "alchemist". By deletion of al-, those word-forms gave rise to the Latin word-forms chimia, chimicus and chimista beginning in the mid 16th century. The word-forms with and without the al- were synonymous until the end of the 17th century; the meaning of each of them covered both alchemy and chemistry.


 * alcohol: الكحول al-Kuḥull, very finely powdered stibnite (Sb2S3) or galena (PbS) or any similar fine powder. The word with that meaning entered Latin in the 13th century spelled alcohol. In Latin in the 14th and 15th centuries the sole meaning was a very fine-grained powder, made of any material. In various cases the powder was obtained by crushing, but in various other cases the powder was obtained by calcination or by sublimation & deposition. In the alchemy and medicine writer Theophrastus Paracelsus (died 1541), the alcohol powders produced by sublimation & deposition were viewed as kinds of distillates, and with that mindset he extended the word's meaning to distillate of wine. "Alcohol of wine" (ethanol) has its first known record in Paracelsus. One of Paracelsus's followers and advocates was Martin Ruland (died 1602). Ruland wrote a dictionary of Latin alchemy terms in which he explained Paracelsus's mindset about the semantics of alcohol. Ruland said: (1) alcohol is an exceedingly fine-grained powder; (2) alcohol vini is distilled wine; (3) it is an error to think of the fine powder as having been obtained by mechanical grinding; (4) Paracelsus's alcool powders, synonymous with alcohol powders, which are powders obtained from various mineral rocks by Paracelsus, are prepared by first mechanically breaking up the mineral and then heating the mineral until it sublimates to a vapor, with "the sublimation performed by a carefully tempered fire, so that the powder of the mineral may be liquefied as little as possible, but at the same time may ascend until the flos [or essence] of the powder is seen sticking to the walls of the enclosure" [like soot does]; and (5) the alcool | alcohol, whether a powder or a liquid, is a purified body [and in other words it is a distillate] – ref: Martin Ruland's Lexicon alchemiae (in Latin). Reference also A Short History of the Art of Distillation, by R.J. Forbes (1948), year 1970 on page 107 regarding Paracelsus, and on numerous pages regarding fine powders made medievally by sublimations and distillations. The same is covered in Makers of Chemistry, by E.J. Holmyard, year 1931 on page 111 regarding Paracelsus and on pages 58-59 regarding fine powders made medievally by sublimations and calcinations. In today's English dictionaries there are a number of other words or word-meanings that originate in the writings of Paracelsus, though none are nearly so well known as alcohol: they include alkahest, gnome,  laudanum, nostoc, synovial. Paracelsus was also instrumental in increasing the circulation of some words that are rarely found before he used them – an example is zinc. The biggest-selling English dictionary of the 18th century (Bailey's) defined alcohol as "a very fine and impalpable powder, or a very pure well rectified spirit."


 * alcove : القُبَّة al-qobba, vault, dome or cupola. That sense for the word is in medieval Arabic dictionaries. The same sense is documented for Spanish alcoba around 1275. Alcoba semantically evolved in Spanish during the 14th to 16th centuries. Alcoba begot French alcove, earliest known record 1646, and French begot English.


 * alembic (distillation apparatus) : الإنبيق al-anbīq, "the still" (for distilling). The Arabic root is traceable to Greek ambix = "cup". The earliest chemical distillations were by Greeks in Alexandria in Egypt in about the 3rd century AD. Their ambix became the 9th-century Arabic al-anbīq, which became the 12th-century Latin alembicus.


 * alfalfa : الفصفصة al-fisfisa (, alfalfa. The Arabic entered medieval Spanish. In medieval Spain alfalfa had a reputation as the best fodder for horses. The ancient Romans grew alfalfa but called it an entirely different name; history of alfalfa. The English name started in the far-west US in the mid-19th century from Spanish alfalfa.


 * algebra : الجبر al-jabr, completing, or restoring broken parts. The word's mathematical use has its earliest record in Arabic in the title of the book "al-mukhtaṣar fī ḥisāb al-jabr wa al-muqābala", translatable as "The Compendium on Calculation by Restoring and Balancing", by the 9th-century mathematician Mohammed Ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi. This algebra book was translated to Latin twice in the 12th century. In medieval Arabic mathematics, al-jabr and al-muqābala were the names of the two main preparatory steps used to solve an algebraic equation and the phrase "al-jabr and al-muqābala" came to mean "method of equation-solving". The medieval Latins borrowed the method and the names. An Arabic copy of Al-Khwarizmi's algebra book is at ref. Historical information on the Latin term "algebra" is in "Robert of Chester's Latin Translation of the Algebra of Al-Khowarizmi: with an introduction, critical notes and an English version", by Louis Charles Karpinski, 200 pages, year 1915; downloadable. The earliest Latin translation of the book of algebra of Al-Khwarizmi was by Robert of Chester and the year was 1145. Centuries later in some Latin manuscripts this particular translation carried the Latin title Liber Algebrae et Almucabola. But the translation of 1145 did not carry that title originally, nor did it use the term algebrae in the body of the text. Instead it used the Latin word "restoration" as a loan-translation of al-jabr. Another 12th-century Latin translation of the same book, by translator Gerard of Cremona, borrowed the Arabic term in the form aliabre and iebra where the Latin 'i' is representing Arabic letter 'j'. In year 1202 in Latin the mathematician Leonardo of Pisa wrote a chapter involving the title Aljebra et Almuchabala where Latin 'j' is pronounced 'y'. Leonardo of Pisa had been influenced by an algebra book of essentially same title in Arabic by Abū Kāmil Shujāʿ ibn Aslam (died 930). In Arabic mathematics the term "al-jabr wa al-muqābala" has its first surviving record with Al-Khwarizmi (died 850), though Al-Khwarizmi gives signs that he did not originate it himself (ref, pages viii - x). Other algebra books with titles having this phrase were written by Al-Karaji a.k.a. Al-Karkhi (died circa 1029), Umar al-Khayyam (died 1123), and Ibn al-Banna (died 1321). Al-Khwarizmi's algebraic method was the same as the method of Diophantus of Alexandria, who wrote in the 3rd century AD in Greek. Diophantus's algebra book was in circulation in Arabic from the 10th century onward, and was known to Al-Karaji aka Al-Karkhi, but was not known to Al-Khwarizmi (refs below). At the time when the Latins started to learn mathematics from Al-Khwarizmi and from other Arabic sources in the 12th century, the Latins had no knowledge of the mathematics of Diophantus nor of similar other Late Greek sources. Refs: Karpinski pages 7, 19, 24, 33, 42, 65-66, 67, 159; and Encyclopaedia of Islamic Science and Scientists volume 1 (year 2005); and "The Influence of Arabic Mathematics on the Medieval West" by André Allard in Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science, Volume 2 (year 1996); and The Algebra of Mohammed ben Musa [al-Khwarizmi ], with notes by Frederic Rosen year 1831; and Diophantus's Arithmetica (in English), with notes on its dissemination history by Thomas Heath, year 1910. In the late medieval Western languages the word "algebra" also had a medical sense, "restoration of broken body parts especially broken bones" – ref: MED. This medical sense was entirely independent of the mathematical sense. It came from the same Arabic word by a different route.


 * alidade: العضادة al-ʿiḍāda  (from ʿiḍad, pivoting arm), the rotary dial for angular positioning on the Astrolabe surveying instrument used in astronomy. The word with that meaning was used by, e.g., the astronomers Abū al-Wafā' Būzjānī (died 998) and Abu al-Salt (died 1134). The word with the same meaning entered Latin in the later Middle Ages in the context of Astrolabes. Crossref azimuth, which entered the European languages on the same pathway.


 * alkali : القلي al-qalī | al-qilī  or قلويِّ | Qoulawi  , an alkaline material derived from the ashes of plants, specifically plants that grew on salty soils – glassworts aka saltworts. The dictionary of Al-Jawhari (died c. 1003) said "al-qilī is obtained from glassworts". In today's terms, the medieval al-qalī was mainly composed of sodium carbonate and potassium carbonate. The Arabs used it as an ingredient in making ink, glass and making soap. The word's early records in the West are in Latin alchemy texts in and around the early 13th century, with the same meaning as the Arabic. One of the early records of "alkali" in the West is in the early 13th-century Latin alchemy text Liber Luminis Luminum, the authorship and/or translation of which is attributed to Michael Scotus (died in the 1230s), who had somewhere learned Arabic. This text is online in Latin as Appendix III of The Life and Legend of Michael Scot and some of its history is in "The Ars alchemie: the first Latin text on practical alchemy", by A. Vinciguerra, year 2009. Another Latin text that contains an early record of the word alkali is the Liber de Aluminibus et Salibus (English: Book of Alums and Salts), which is an Arabic-to-Latin translation with a date of late 12th or early 13th century in Latin and it is online in both Arabic and Latin at Ref (with "alkali salt" in section G §78). Those two Latin texts speak of sal alkali where sal = "salt", which corresponds to the medieval Arabic milh al-qalī where milh = "salt". Alkali is in the English language since the later 14th century – ref: MED. It is also in Italian in the 14th century – ref: TLIO (in Italian). The earliest French is 1509. CNRTL.fr cites a book by Guy de Chauliac using the word alkali in France in 1363, but that was in Latin, and the subsequent medieval translation of Chauliac's book into French did not use the Latin word – ref: DMF, ref: French Chauliac. In Spanish, the first records are in Latin-to-Spanish translations about year 1500, translating Latin medical books written in Italy and France, as per Corpus Diacrónico del Español.


 * ambergris and possibly amber: عنبر ʿanbar, meaning ambergris, i.e. a waxy material produced in the stomach of sperm whales and used historically for perfumery. From Arabic sellers of ambergris, the word passed into the Western languages in the mid-medieval centuries as ambra with the same meaning as the Arabic. In the late medieval centuries the Western word took on the additional meaning of amber, from causes not understood. The two meanings – ambergris and amber – then co-existed for more than four centuries. "Ambergris" was coined to eliminate the ambiguity (the color of ambergris is grey more often than not, and gris is French for grey). It wasn't until about 1700 that the ambergris meaning died out in English amber.


 * anil, aniline, polyaniline : نيلة nīlah, indigo dye. Arabic word came from Sanskrit nili = "indigo". The indigo dye originally came from tropical India. From medieval Arabic, anil became the usual word for indigo in Portuguese and Spanish. Indigo dye was uncommon throughout Europe until the 16th century; history of indigo dye. In English anil is a natural indigo dye or the tropical American plant it is obtained from. Aniline is a technical word in dye chemistry dating from mid-19th-century Europe.


 * apricot: البرقوق al-barqūq, apricot. Arabic is in turn traceable back to Early Byzantine Greek and thence to classical Latin praecoqua, literally "precocious" and specifically precociously ripening peaches, i.e. apricots. The Arabic was passed onto the late medieval Spanish albarcoque and Catalan albercoc, each meaning apricot. Early spellings in English included abrecok (year 1551), abrecox (1578), apricock (1593), each meaning apricot. The letter 't' in today's English apricot has come from French. In French it starts around the 1520s as abricot and aubercot meaning apricot.


 * arsenal : دار صناعة dār sināʿa, literally "house of manufacturing" but in practice in medieval Arabic it meant government-run manufacturing, usually for the military, most notably for the navy. In the Italian maritime republics in the 12th century the word was adopted to designate a naval dockyard, a place for building ships and military armaments for ships, and repairing armed ships. In the later-medieval centuries the biggest such arsenal in Europe was the Arsenal of Venice. 12th-century Italian-Latin has the spellings darsena, arsena and tarsanatus. In 14th-century Italian and Italian-Latin the spellings included terzana, arzana, arsana, arcenatus, tersanaia, terzinaia, darsena, and 15th-century tarcenale, all meaning a shipyard and in only some cases having naval building activity. In 16th-century French and English an arsenal was either a naval dockyard or an arsenal, or both. In today's French arsenal continues to have the same dual meanings as in the 16th century.


 * artichoke : الخرشف al-kharshuf   | الخرشوف al-kharshūf, artichoke. The word with that meaning has records in medieval Andalusi and Maghrebi Arabic, including at around year 1100. With the same meaning, Spanish alcachofa (circa 1400), Spanish carchofa (1423), Spanish alcarchofa (1423), Italian carciofjo (circa 1525) are phonetically close to the Arabic precedent, and so are today's Spanish alcachofa, today's Italian carciofo. It is not clear how the word mutated to French artichault (1538), northern Italian articiocch (circa 1550), northern Italian arcicioffo (16th century), English archecokk (1531), English artochock (1542), but the etymology dictionaries unanimously say these have to be mutations of the Spanish and Italian word.


 * assassin : الحشيشية al-hashīshīya | الحشاشونal-Ḥashshāshūn, an Arabic nickname for the Nizari Ismaili religious sect in the Levant during the Crusades era. This sect carried out assassinations against chiefs of other sects, including Crusading Christians, and the story circulated throughout Western Europe at the time (13th century and late 12th). Medievally in Latin & Italian & French, the sect was called the Assissini | Assassini. Medievally in Arabic texts the wordform is al-hashīshīya, but by Arabic grammar this can be put in the form hashīshīn also. Hashīshīn is surely the wordform that the Latin Crusaders borrowed in the Levant. By well-known aspects of Latin & Italian & French phonetics, it is well understood why the wordform got phonetically changed from the Arabic Hashīshīn to the Latinate Assissini. The generalization of the sect's nickname to the meaning of any sort of assassin happened in Italian at the start of the 14th century. The word with the generalized meaning was often used in Italian in the 14th and 15th centuries. In the mid 16th century the Italian word entered French, followed a little later by English.


 * attar (of roses): عطر ʿitr, perfume, aroma. The English word came from the Hindi/Urdu-speaking area of northeast India in the late 18th century and its source was the Hindi/Urdu atr | itr = "perfume", The word attar is not used in European languages other than English. An early record in English, 1792: "Roses are a great article for the famous otter, all of which is commonly supposed to come from Bengal" in northeast India – ref: NED. The earliest known use of the wordform "attar" according to the NED is in 1798 in The view of Hindoostan: Volume 2: Eastern Hindoostan, by Thomas Pennant, which says the roses for the attar are grown near Lucknow city in the Hindi/Urdu-speaking area of northeast India and the attar is extracted by distillation. In Urdu, عطر ʿatr | ʿitr = "perfume", and also عطار ʿatār = "perfume"; see e.g. عطر @ Platts' Urdu-English Dictionary, year 1884. The spelling in Hindi is इत्र  ittr | itr | itra = "perfume". In the English of India in the 19th century it was called "Otto of Roses, or by imperfect purists Attar of Roses, an essential oil obtained in India from the petals of the flower, a manufacture of which the chief seat is at Ghazipur", a city in the Hindi/Urdu-speaking area of northeast India – Yule & Burnell, year 1903. The writer Fanny Parkes resided in India from 1822 to 1838 and was based at Allahabad city in the Hindi/Urdu-speaking area of northeast India from 1827 to 1838. She wrote about India: "The Muhammadans, both male and female, are extremely fond of perfumes of every sort and description ; and the quantity of atr of roses, atr of jasmine, atr of khas-khās, &c., that the ladies in a zenāna put upon their garments is quite over powering." – Ref. which had come from the Persian ʿitr = "perfume", and the Persian had come medievally from the Arabic ʿitr.


 * aubergine : البادنجان al-bādinjān, aubergine. The plant is native to India. It was unknown to the ancient Greeks and Romans. It was introduced to the Mediterranean region by the medieval Arabs. The Arabic name entered Iberian Romance languages late medievally, producing late medieval Spanish alberengena = "aubergine" and Catalan alberginia = "aubergine". The Catalan was the parent of the French aubergine, which starts in the mid-18th century and which embodies a change from al- to au- that happened in French.


 * average : عُوَار ʿawār, a defect, or anything defective or damaged, including partially spoiled merchandise; and عواري ʿawārī (also عوارة ʿawāra) = "of or relating to ʿawār, a state of partial damage". Within the Western languages the word's history begins in medieval sea-commerce on the Mediterranean. 12th and 13th century Genoa Latin avaria meant "damage, loss and non-normal expenses arising in connection with a merchant sea voyage"; and the same meaning for avaria is in Marseille in 1210, Barcelona in 1258 and Florence in the late 13th. 15th-century French avarie had the same meaning, and it begot English "averay" (1491) and English "average" (1502) with the same meaning. Today, Italian avaria, Catalan avaria and French avarie still have the primary meaning of "damage". The huge transformation of the meaning in English began with the practice in later medieval and early modern Western merchant-marine law contracts under which if the ship met a bad storm and some of the goods had to be thrown overboard to make the ship lighter and safer, then all merchants whose goods were on the ship were to suffer proportionately (and not whoever's goods were thrown overboard); and more generally there was to be proportionate distribution of any avaria. From there the word was adopted by British insurers, creditors, and merchants for talking about their losses as being spread across their whole portfolio of assets and having a mean proportion. Today's meaning developed out of that, and started in the mid-18th century, and started in English.The Arabic origin of avaria was first reported by Reinhart Dozy in the 19th century. Dozy's original summary is in his 1869 book Glossaire. Summary information about the word's early records in Italian-Latin, Italian, Catalan, and French is at avarie @ CNRTL.fr. The seaport of Genoa is the location of the earliest-known record in European languages, year 1157. A set of medieval Latin records of avaria at Genoa is in the downloadable lexicon Vocabolario Ligure, by Sergio Aprosio, year 2001, avaria in Volume 1 pages 115-116. Many more records in medieval Latin at Genoa are at StoriaPatriaGenova.it, usually in the plurals avariis and avarias. At the port of Marseille in the 1st half of the 13th century notarized commercial contracts have dozens of instances of Latin avariis (ablative plural of avaria), as published in Blancard year 1884. Some information about the English word over the centuries is at NED (year 1888). See also the definition of English "average" in English dictionaries published in the early 18th century, i.e., in the time period just before the big transformation of the meaning: Kersey-Phillips' dictionary (1706), Blount's dictionary (1707 edition), Hatton's dictionary (1712), Bailey's dictionary (1726), Martin's dictionary (1749). Some complexities surrounding the English word's history are discussed in Hensleigh Wedgwood year 1882 page 11 and Walter Skeat year 1888 page 781. Today there is consensus that: (#1) today's English "average" descends from medieval Italian avaria, Catalan avaria, and (#2) among the Latins the word avaria started in the 12th century and it started as a term of Mediterranean sea-commerce, and (#3) there is no root for avaria to be found in Latin, and (#4) a substantial number of Arabic words entered Italian, Catalan and Provençal in the 12th and 13th centuries starting as terms of Mediterranean sea-commerce, and (#5) the Arabic ʿawār | ʿawārī is phonetically a good match for avaria, as conversion of w to v was regular in Latin and Italian, and -ia is a suffix in Italian, and the Western word's earliest records are in Italian-speaking locales (writing in Latin). And most commentators agree that (#6) the Arabic ʿawār | ʿawārī = "damage | relating to damage" is semantically a good match for avaria = "damage or damage expenses". A minority of commentators have been dubious about this on the grounds that the early records of Italian-Latin avaria have, in some cases, a meaning of "an expense" in a more general sense – see TLIO (in Italian). The majority view is that the meaning of "an expense" was an expansion from "damage and damage expense", and the chronological order of the meanings in the records supports this view, and the broad meaning "an expense" was never the most commonly used meaning. On the basis of the above points, the inferential step is made that the Latinate word came or probably came from the Arabic word.


 * azimuth : السمت Alssamt|ssamt, the directions, the azimuths. The word was in use in medieval Arabic astronomy including with the Arabic version of the Astrolabe instrument. It was borrowed into Latin in the mid 12th century as azimuth in the context of using Astrolabes. In the mid 13th century in Spanish, açumut | açumuth is in a set of astronomy books that took heavily from Arabic sources and again Astrolabes is the context of use. The earliest in English is in the 1390s in Geoffrey Chaucer's Treatise on the Astrolabe, which used the word about a dozen times.


 * azure (colour), lazurite (mineral), azurite (mineral), lazulite (mineral) : لازورد lāzward | lāzūard , lazurite and lapis lazuli, a rock with a vivid blue colour, and this rock was crushed to a powder for use as a blue colourant in inks, paints, eye-makeup, etc. The word is ultimately from the place-name of a large deposit of azure-blue rock in northeastern Afghanistan ("Lajward"), which was the chief and probably the only source-place for the most-desired type of azure-blue rock in the medieval era – the type called Lazurite today. Medievally the word was also used for other types of azure-blue rock that were less costly, especially the type called Azurite today. Latin had azurium and lazurium for the rocks, with records starting in the 9th century. Late medieval English had azure and lazurium for the rocks. From the powdered rocks, azure was a color-name in all the later-medieval Western languages. Today's Russian, Ukrainian and Polish have the colour-name spelled with the letter 'L' (лазурь, lazur).

B

 * benzoin, benzene, benzoic acid : لبان جاوي lubān jāwī, benzoin resin, literally "frankincense of Java". Benzoin is a natural resin from an Indonesian tree. Arab sea-merchants shipped it to the Middle East for sale as perfumery and incense in the later medieval centuries. It first came to Europe in the early 15th century. The European name benzoin is a great mutation of the Arabic name lubān jāwī and the linguistic factors that caused the mutation are well understood. Among European chemists, benzoin resin was the original source for benzoic acid, which when decaboxylated gives benzene


 * bezoar: بازهر bāzahr, and بادزهر bādzahr (from Persian pâdzahr), a type of hard bolus, containing calcium compounds, sometimes formed in the stomachs of goats (and other ruminants). Today in English a bezoar is a medical and veterinary term for a ball of indigestible material that collects in the stomach and fails to pass through the intestines. Goat bezoars were recommended by medieval Arabic medical writers for use as antidotes to poisons, particularly arsenic poisons. That is how the word first entered medieval Latin medical vocabulary.


 * borax, borate, boron : بورق būraq , various salts, including borax. Borax (i.e., sodium borate) was in use medievally primarily as a fluxing agent in soldering gold, silver and metal ornaments. The ancient Greeks and Romans used fluxing agents in metalworking, but borax was unknown to them. In medieval Europe there was no borax except as an import from Arabian lands. The Arabs imported at least part of it from India. From Arabic būraq, Latin adopted the name borax | baurach in the 12th century meaning borax for fluxing metals, and sometimes later more loosely meaning any kind of salts for fluxing metals.Medieval Arabic būraq encompassed various salts used for various purposes, and the name often came with a qualifier attached to give more specificity. The salts included naturally occurring sodium carbonate (natron) and sodium borate (borax). On the other hand, medieval Arabic tinkār meant specifically borax. Tinkār was used primarily as a fluxing agent in soldering metals. It seems the Arabs and Persians were introduced to it from sources in India. The Persian and Arabic name tinkār probably originated from a Sanskritic word tinkana meaning borax from Tibet and Cashmere – H. Grieb, year 2004. The medieval Arabic writer Al-Razi (died c. 930) said that tinkār is one type of būraq and another type is "goldsmith's būraq" (meaning a type of salt in customary use by goldsmiths for soldering) – H. Grieb, year 2004. More examples of usage of both būraq and tinkār in medieval Arabic are in ref and ref. In late medieval Latin alchemy books it was spelled borax, baurac (e.g.), baurach (e.g.), boracia, and other similar, and for some late medieval Latin writers this word had the same broad meaning as in Arabic (e.g.) but more usually in late medieval Latin it meant a substance used as a fluxing agent – e.g., e.g., e.g.. Later-medieval Latin also had tincar | atincar | tinkar, always meaning a fluxing agent, usually borax, not always borax – e.g., e.g., e.g., e.g.. In the 16th and 17th centuries in European metallurgy literature, non-borax substances could be called "borax" when they were used as fluxing agents, and borax at that time was often called tincar | atincar, and "Arabian borax", as well as "borax" – Martin Ruland's year 1612 Lexicon Alchemiae (in Latin) has the definitions of that era for tinckar, borax, boras, baurac, and  chrysocolla. In medieval Arabic the usual name for borax was تنكار tinkār. This name was adopted by the medieval Latins starting in the 12th century as tincar | atincar with the same meaning. Today's Tincalconite, which is a mineral variant of borax, is descended from the medieval Latin tincar = "borax", conjoined with ancient Greek konis = "powder" plus the conventional suffix -ite. "Boron" and "borate" descend from "borax". Bouquet: باقة

Addendum for words that may or may not be of Arabic ancestry

 * alizarin: Alizarin is a red dye with considerable commercial usage. The word's first records are in the early 19th century in France as alizari. The origin and early history of the French word is obscure. Questionably, it may have come from the Arabic العصارة al-ʿasāra = "the juice" (from Arabic root ʿasar = "to squeeze"). A majority of today's dictionaries endorse the al-ʿasāra idea, while a minority say the connection with al-ʿasāra is improbable. Until the late 19th century the alizarin dye was made from the roots of the madder plant, aka Rubia tinctorum plant. (Today alizarin is made in pure synthetic form). Dye-making from the madder root was common in medieval and early modern Europe. The word alizari[n] is only on record from the early 19th century. In France in year 1831 the official dictionary of the French language defined "izari" as "madder from the Levant" and flagged it as a recent word – Ref. It seems that an expansion of exports of madder from the Levant to western Europe may have occurred in the early 19th century – Ref. But (1) the Arabic word for madder was a completely different word; (2) the Arabic al-ʿaṣāra = "the juice" is very rarely or not at all used in Arabic in any sense of a dye; and (3) the way you get the dyestuff from the madder root is by drying the root, followed by milling the dried root into a powder – not by juicing or squeezing. So the Arabic verb ʿaṣar = "to squeeze" is semantically off-target, as well as being unattested in the relevant sense. Also the earliest known records are in French and it is not natural for an Arabic 'ṣ' to be converted to a French 'z' instead of a French 's' – Ref. Regarding the Spanish word alizari the experts Dozy & Engelmann say it looks Arabic but they can find no progenitor for it in Arabic – Ref: (year 1869) (page 144). In 1826, chemist Pierre Jean Robiquet discovered in madder root two distinct molecules with dye properties. The one producing a rich red he called "alizarin" and it soon entered all major European languages as a scientific word. Robiquet says in his 1826 research report: "regarding this new [red] entity coming from the neutral-coloured substance, we propose the name alizarin, from alizari, a term used in commerce for the entire madder root." – Ref: (year 1826)(page 411).


 * almanac : This word's earliest securely dated record in the West is in Latin in 1267. A very small number of possibly a little earlier records exist but come with insecure dates. In its early records in Latin it was spelled almanac and it meant a set of tables detailing movements of astronomical bodies. Namely the movements of the five then-known planets and the moon and the sun. A lot of medieval Arabic writings on astronomy exist, and they don't use a word that can be matched to the Latin almanac. One of the words they do use is "zīj" and another is "taqwīm". The 19th-century Arabic-word-origin experts Engelmann & Dozy said about almanac: "To have the right to argue that it is of Arabic origin, one must first find a candidate word in Arabic" and they found none. There is a medieval Arabic المناخ al-munākh, which would be a good fit phonetically, but it has no semantic connection to the Latin almanac. The origin of the Latin remains obscure.


 * amalgam, amalgamate: This word is first seen in European languages in 13th and 14th century Latin alchemy texts, where it meant an amalgam of mercury with another metal, and it was spelled amalgama. It lacks a plausible origin in terms of Latin precedents. In medieval Arabic records the word الملغم al-malgham | الملغمة al-malghama meaning "amalgam" is uncommon, but does exist and was used by a number of different Arabic writers. Today some English dictionaries say the Latin was from this Arabic, or probably was. But other dictionaries are unconvinced, and say the origin of the Latin is obscure.Dictionaries reporting the 13th-century Latin amalgama to be either surely or probably from Arabic al-malgham include Partridge (1966), Raja Tazi (1998), Random House Dictionary (2001), and Etymonline.com (2010). Loss of the first 'L' in going from al-malgham to amalgama (if it occurred) is called dissimilation in linguistics. Documentation in medieval Arabic for al-malgham(a) = "amalgam" is presented in Wörterbuch der klassischen arabischen Sprache, by Manfred Ullmann, Volume 2, on pages 901 and 902, year 1991, which collects examples from around a dozen different medieval Arabic texts. As an item supplementing Manfred Ullmann's collection, the Arabic dictionary of Ibn Sida (died 1066) states: "any melting substance such as gold, etc. mixed with mercury is called مُلْغَمٌ molgham" – لغم @ Ibn Sīda's dictionary. Ibn Sida's statement was copied into the dictionary of Ibn Manzur (died 1312) – لغم @ Lisan al-Arab. The Book of Precious Stones of Al-Biruni (died 1048), in its chapter on mercury, has grammatical plural ملاغم الذهب... ملاغم الفضة malāghim al-dhahab... malāghim al-fida = "gold amalgams... silver amalgams"; and elsewhere in the same book Al-Biruni has كالملغمة kal-malghama meaning a paste consisting of cowdung and salt (where Arabic kal- = "-like" = "sort of") – Ref. The Syriac-to-Arabic dictionary of Bar Bahlul (died late 10th century) says in Syriac that a ܡܠܓܡܐ malagma of mercury with silver is called الملغمة al-malghama in Arabic – ref: ܐܦܪܘܣܠܝܢܘܢ @ Bar Bahlul column 267, line 25. Additional details about the medieval word are at English Words of Arabic Etymological Ancestry: Note #24 "Amalgam".


 * antimony : This word's first known record is in Constantinus Africanus (died circa 1087), who was a widely circulated medical author in later-medieval Latin (crossref borage). His spelling was "antimonium". The medieval meaning was antimony sulfide. Antimony sulfide was well known to the medieval Arabs under the names ithmid and kohl and well known to the Latins under the name stibi | stibium | stimmi. The medieval Latin name antimonium is of obscure origin. Possibly it is a Latinized form of some Arabic name but no clear precedent in Arabic has been found. In the Western European languages other than Latin, in the late medieval period, antimony is a "bookish" word arriving from the Latin. It is found in medical books and alchemy books.


 * borage (plant), Boraginaceae (botanical family) :The borage plant is native to the Mediterranean area. It was known to the ancient Greeks and Romans under other names. The name borage is from medieval Latin borago | borrago | borragine. The name is first seen in Constantinus Africanus, an 11th-century Latin medical writer and translator whose native language was Arabic and who drew from Arabic medical sources. Many of today's etymology dictionaries suppose the name to be from Arabic and report the proposition that Constantinus took it from أبو عرق abū ʿaraq = "sweat inducer", because borage leaves supposedly had a sweat-inducing effect and the word would be pronounced būaraq in Arabic. However, in medieval Arabic no such name is on record for borage, and phonetically the match between būaraq and borrago is weak, and Constantinus makes no mention of sweat in connection with borage, and a non-Arabic good alternative proposition exists. Constantinus Africanus writing in Latin in Italy in the late 11th century mentions two Arabic names for borage (including the usual name for borage in medieval Arabic, lisān al-thūr) and he does not indicate that his own name borrago | borragine is an Arabic name. (, ISBN 9004100148). Nevertheless an Arabic source-word for borrago is the preferred proposition in a majority of today's dictionaries. A large minority of dictionaries prefer the non-Arabic proposition of deriving borrago from Latin burra | borra = "coarse wool, stuffing", horse-hair or wool used as stuffing, also "shaggy garment", "garment made of coarse material"; medieval Italian borra = "raw hair, particularly raw hair used as wadding" (today's Italian borra means "wadding") – borra @ TLIO.ovi.cnr.it, borra @ ETIMO.it. This derivation is in observance of borage's hairy stems and rough-textured leaves, together with the Latin suffix -ago appended. The suffix "-ago" in Latin means "a sort of" (examples: classical Latin virago where Latin vir = "courageous man"; classical Latin plumbago (mineral) where Latin plumbum = "lead (a metal)"; classical Latin plantago where Latin planta = "foot-sole") and it is in botanical names from Latin including Filago, Medicago, Plantago, Plumbago, Selago, Solidago, Tussilago, Ventilago, fabago, githago, lentago, liliago, populago, trixago. Details surrounding the word's beginnings in medieval Latin are given at Note #167: "Borage" @ English Words of Arabic Etymological Ancestry, from which a conclusion is made that the medieval Latinate word did not come from Arabic.