List of English words of Arabic origin (K–M)

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 has been used as the source for the list. Words associated with the Islamic religion are omitted; for Islamic words, see Glossary of Islam. Rare and archaic 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

K

 * Khalsa, Khalistan : خالصة khalsa  'pure, real, proper.'


 * Kermes (insect genus), kermes (dye), kermes oak (tree), kermesite (mineral) : قِرمِز qirmiz, dye from kermes-type scale insects including (but not limited to) today's Kermes insects. The bodies of several scale insect species produce a crimson dye that in medieval times was commercially valuable for dyeing textiles. Medieval Arabic dictionaries say al-qirmiz is an "Armenian red dye", which means dye from the Armenian cochineal insects of today's English, which are distinct from the Kermes insects. The word was in use in Arabic for centuries before it started to be used in European languages, and was adopted in Europe beginning in the late 13th century, in Italy, with the same meaning as the Arabic. In Europe the meaning began to be narrowed to today's Kermes species in scientific botany and taxonomy works of the mid 16th century. A number of distinct scale-insect species yield comparable but distinct red dyes. Kermes in English today refers to one of these, but the medieval Arabic name qirmiz usually referred to a different one of these -- the one now called in English "Armenian cochineal", obtained from insects of the genus Porphyrophora (different from the genus Kermes). Some examples of medieval Arabic writers who mention al-qirmiz and whose works are online in Arabic in text-searchable format at AlWaraq.net: Ibn Duraid (died 933), Ibn Abd Rabbih (died 940), Al-Istakhri (died c. 957), Al-Biruni (died 1048), Ibn Sida (died 1066). Additional medieval history is in "The Insect Dyes of Western and West-Central Asia", by R.A. Donkin, year 1977, 33 pages. In the later medieval centuries in English, French, Italian, Spanish, and Latin, today's Kermes dye was usually called grain or grana | granum. Kermes-like red dyes, including Armenian cochineal and Polish cochineal, were called in late medieval Italian chermisi | cremisi, which begot late medieval Latin chermes | kermes. The Latin and Italian spelling che- was pronounced KE- . One of the earliest scientific writers in Europe to use the Latin word chermes in the specifically restricted sense of today's Kermes was Pietro Andrea Mattioli in the 1540s (example in Latin). The word-form kermes entered English and French in the 16th century from the Italian-Latin chermes. More details about kermes are at English Words Of Arabic Etymological Ancestry: Note #59: Crimson and Kermes.


 * khat, cathinone : قات qāt, the plant Catha edulis and the stimulant obtained from it. Khat was borrowed directly from Arabic qāt in the mid 19th century. The technical botany name Catha was borrowed from the same Arabic in the mid-18th century (botanist was Peter Forskal).


 * kismet: قسمة qisma, destinity, fate. Kismet was borrowed into English via Turkish from the original Arabic word qisma which means portion or lot.


 * kohl (cosmetics) : كحل kohl, finely powdered galena , stibnite, and similar sooty-colored powder used for eye-shadow, eye-liner, and mascara. The word with that meaning was in many travellers' reports in English, from travellers in Arabic lands, for centuries before it was adopted natively in English. Crossref alcohol which was transferred from the same Arabic word at an earlier time by a different pathway.

L

 * lacquer, lac : لكّ lakk,  lac. The Arabic came from the Sanskrit lākh = "lac", a particular kind of resin, native in India, used to make a varnish and also used as a red colorant. Lac was valued foremostly as a red colorant in the medieval era. The medieval Arabs imported lac from India. The word entered medieval Latin as lacca | laca in the early 9th century, although instances are scarce in Latin before the 12th century. It is found late medievally in all of the Western Latinate languages.A servant of Ibn Badis (died 1062) used لكّ lakk | lukk = "lac" as an ingredient in making red ink, where it acted as a binder and as a red tincture – ref (pages 19 and 23), ref (pages 30 and 32). Ibn Sina's Canon around year 1025 said lak was a resinous exudation from a plant – ref. Ibn Baklarish in his book Mustaʿīnī dated around year 1100 said lakk could refer to either the resin from a tree or the crimson colorant from the lac scale insect – Reinhart Dozy, year 1869. Dozy says the Arabs used lac foremostly as a red colorant. Simon of Genoa in the 1290s said in Latin: "Lacca is a red gum from which a dye is made.... The Arabs call it lech" – ref. The word is in Latin as lacca in the early 9th century in a book about making colorants, where the lacca is used as a coloring ingredient – namely this is the book Compositiones Variae, which survives today in a physical manuscript dated early 9th century as a physical manuscript – Compositiones Variae text; ref for its date. Lacca is similarly in Latin in the Mappae Clavicula, a book about making colorants dated during and before the 12th century. Today's Italian, Spanish & Portuguese lacca | laca meaning lac and lacquer go back to medieval dates in those languages. Spanish laca and Catalan laca have records at around 1250 – CORDE, Diccionari.cat. French lacque dates from about 1400 and French also has lac, lache, and lacca with late medieval dates meaning lac and lacquer – Dictionnaire du Moyen Français. The English lac and lacquer are given 16th-century start dates in English, but English has at least two 15th-century records in the form lacca in Latin-to-English medical translations – Middle English Dictionary. When the Europeans sailed to India in the 16th century, they met the word lākh spoken by the Indians meaning the lac resin, and they imported the lac directly from India to Europe. Since the word was already in Portuguese, Latin, French, and English before they sailed, it is incorrect or disputable to say (as some dictionaries do) that the word "lac" came to English directly from India. Compare American Heritage Dictionary against Random House Dictionary on this issue at Lac @ TheFreeDictionary.com.  Two lesser-seen varnishing resins with Arabic word-descent are sandarac Europeans got all their sandarac resin from the Arab lands, primarily from Morocco, and the Arabic word سندروس sandarūs is almost certainly the source for the European sandarac resin word. The 11th-century Arabic encyclopedia The Canon of Medicine by Ibn Sina uses the word sandarūs to mean a tree resin – ref: سندروس ... هو صمغ شجرة. A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (year 1914) says: "New Latin sandaracha Arabum represents Arabic sandarus (Dozy, from P. de Alcalá 1505), also sandalus (Freytag, from Golius); but the Arabic word cannot be native Arabic" – ref: NED. Simon of Genoa in Latin in the late 13th century said sandaracha means arsenic sulfide, yellow or red but he added that in Arabic the word means varnishing resin – ref (in Latin). In the vernacular languages in the West the sandarac resin word appears to begin in the early to mid-16th century in Spanish and Italian (see Merrifield year 1849), from which it was borrowed a century later into English (ref: NED). Pedro de Alcala a.k.a. Petri Hispani (1505) said Spanish barnis (varnish) is sandaros in Arabic – ref. Andrés Laguna (died 1559) said Spanish grassa, "no different from juniper resin", is called "sandaraca" in Arabic – ref1, ref2 – which was not quite correct because the word in Arabic texts was sandarūs. The Arabic word sandarūs might have come down from ancient Greek sandaracha. The Greek word and also the classical and medieval Latin sandaraca meant red arsenic sulfide and red lead and it was employed as a red pigment. Sandarac resin has a light yellow color. Ibn Al-Baitar (died 1248) said sandarūs is a "yellow resin" – ref. But possibly the Arabic sandarūs might have started out referring to some other tree resin with a red color (see e.g.). In some of today's English dictionaries, the resin-word sandarac is derived from the medieval and classical Latin sandaraca (without Arabic intermediation) which is okay with regard to the word's form but not okay with regard to the semantics because the medieval Latin sandaraca was not a resin. and elemi.


 * lazurite (mineral) : See azure.


 * lemon, limonene : ليمون līmūn, lemon. The cultivation of lemons, limes, and bitter oranges was introduced to the Mediterranean region by the Arabs in the mid-medieval era. The ancient Greeks & Romans knew the citron, but not the lemon, lime, or orange. Ibn al-'Awwam in the late 12th century distinguished ten kinds of citrus fruits grown in Andalusia and spelled the lemon as اللامون al-lāmūn. Abdallatif al-Baghdadi (died 1231) distinguished almost as many different citrus fruits in Egypt and spelled the lemon as الليمون al-līmūn. The Arabic word came from Persian. The lemon tree's native origin appears to be in India.


 * lime (fruit): ليم līm, meaning sometimes any citrus fruit, sometimes lemon and lime fruit, and sometimes a lime fruit. In Arabic līm was a back-formation from līmūn; see lemon. Medieval writers who used līm with the meaning of a lime fruit include Al-Qalqashandi (died 1414), Ibn Batuta (died 1369), and Ibn Khaldoun (died 1406). In Spanish and Italian today lima means lime fruit. In bygone centuries in Spanish and Italian lima meant also lime-lemon varieties distinct from today's lime. Pedro de Alcalá's Spanish-Arabic dictionary year 1505 translated the Spanish lima as Arabic lim. Today in English "lime" has become a color-name as well as a fruit. The color-name originated by reference to the fruit. It can be noted in passing that all the following English color-names are descended from Arabic words (not necessarily Arabic color-words): apricot (color), aubergine (color), azure (color), coffee (color), crimson (color), henna (color), lemon (color), lime (color), orange (color), saffron (color), tangerine (color).


 * luffa : ليف Līf, luffa. Entered European botany nomenclature from Egypt in 1638. The luffa is a tropical plant, native in Indochina, which was under cultivation with irrigation in Egypt at the time. The name has been in English botany books since the mid 18th century as Luffa. In the later 19th century it re-entered English in non-botanical discourse as "Loofah" referring to the luffa scrubbing sponge.


 * lute : العود al-ʿaūd|عُود (, the oud. Al-ʿaūd was one of the chief musical instruments of the Arabs throughout the medieval era. The European lute word, a word now in all European languages, has its earliest records in the mid 13th century in Catalan and Spanish. The early Catalan form was laut. Spanish has alod in 1254, alaut in about 1330, laud in 1343. "The Portuguese form pt:Alaúde clearly shows the Arabic origin." Medievally the ʿaūd of the Arabs and the lute of the Latins were very nearly the same instrument and differed mainly in the musicians' playing style. The medieval Latins borrowed the instrument from the Arabs, as well as the name. The earliest unambiguous record in English is in the 2nd half of the 14th century (Middle English Dictionary).

M

 * macramé : مِقرَمة miqrama, an embroidered cloth covering. Closely related is Arabic miqram = "decorated bedspread or tapestry". The path to English is said to be: Arabic -> Turkish -> Italian -> French -> English. 19th-century English.


 * magazine : مخازن makhāzin, storehouses, storerooms. Contains the Arabic root khazan = "to store" and the Arabic noun prefix m-. The word khazaanah is also used in Persian (spoken in Iran) and Dari (spoken in Afghanistan) to refer to a place of storage. The earliest known record in a European language is Latin magazenum meaning "storeroom" in 1228 at the seaport of Marseille. The other early records in European languages are in Italian and Catalan coastal cities in the 13th century, with the same meaning. Magazeni = "magazine, i.e. storehouse" has several records in the 13th century in Italy in Latin, including 1234 in Venice – Raja Tazi 1998. Raja Tazi notes that the seaport of Venice at that time was in regular trading with the Arabic seaports of Ceuta, Béjaïa, Tunis, Oran, etc. The same was true of the seaport of Marseille, where the first record of magazenum (1228) occurs in a context of commerce by Marseille citizens in North African seaports – CNRTL.fr. Records in Catalan begin 1255 – magatzem @ Diccionari.cat. Regarding the Catalan magatzem = "magazine", its 'tz' is like the way that 'zz' is pronounced in the Italian magazzino, like how English "pizza" is pronounced "peetza". The spelling magazzino in Italian is on record from the first half of the 14th century (seaport of Pisa year 1318 has magazeno – TLIO). In Sicily the word is found in the seaport of Palermo in 1287 as machasseno and in seaport of Messina in 1284 as mahazenis – ref: Arabismi Medievali di Sicilia by Girolamo Caracausi, year 1983 on page 272 and page 273. Those and other early evidences imply that the word magazine came to the seaports of Italy and Provence and Catalonia directly from North Africa, and did not come from Spain and Portugal, did not come from the Spanish word almacen | almazen = "magazine". This point has been made in Origin and spread of Oriental words in European languages, by Arnald Steiger, year 1963. The word still has that meaning today in Arabic, French, Italian, Catalan, and Russian. It was sometimes used that way in English in the 16th to 18th centuries, but more commonly in English a magazine was a storage place for ammunitions or gunpowder, and later a receptacle for storing bullets. A magazine in the publishing sense of the word started in the English language, and its start was in the 17th century meaning a store of information about military or navigation subjects.


 * marcasite : مرقشيثا marqashīthā, iron sulfide, from Arabic مَرَقشِيت . Occurs in Arabic in a 9th-century minerals book, and was used by Al-Razi (died c. 930) and Ibn Sina (died 1037) and Al-Biruni (died 1048), among others. The word's earliest known records in the European languages are in Arabic-to-Latin translations dated late 12th century. In modern English, marcasite is defined scientifically as orthorhombic iron sulfide, but marcasite jewelry is jewelry made from isometric iron sulfide.


 * massicot : مسحقونيا masḥaqūniyā | مسحوقونيا masḥūqūniyā, a glazing material applied in the manufacture of pottery. In today's English massicot is defined as orthorhombic lead monoxide (PbO). Historically, in the late medieval and early modern West, the most common context of use of lead monoxide (including massicot) was in the manufacture of lead-based pottery glazes, and, later, lead glass. The Western word's history starts with late medieval Latin massacumia, which was a pottery glazing material in Italy in the late 13th century (sometimes lead-based and sometimes not), and came from Arabic masḥaqūniyā (mas-ha-qun-iya) meaning approximately the same.Different dictionaries report different origins for "massicot". The origin reported here is the one in massicot @ CNRTL.fr, massicot @ Random House Dictionary, marzacotto @ TLIO.ovi.cnr.it, marzacotto @ treccani.it, mazacote @ RAE.es. The modern English name massicot came from the 15th century French massicot which came from the 14th century Italian mazzacotto (1303), Italian maççacocti (1312), Italian marzacotto (1355), which in Italian in the 14th century was a glaze for earthenware, not necessarily lead-based – TLIO (in Italian). Medieval Arabic writers having مسحقونيا masḥaqūniyā | مسحوقونيا masḥūqūniyā as a glaze for earthenware include Ibn Ahmad Ibn Yusuf Al-Khwarizmi (lived c. 980) (Ref), Al-Biruni (died 1048) (Ref), and Ibn al-Baitar (died 1248) (Ref). The derivation of the European word from the Arabic word is complicated, and involves the fact that the European word has records in the 13th and 14th centuries in Latin in Italy in the wordform massacumia (and in France in Latin in the 14th century as massacumia, and in Spain in Spanish in the 13th century as maçaconia). For details see English Words Of Arabic Etymological Ancestry: Note #100: Massicot.


 * mattress, matelasse : مطرح matrah, a large cushion or rug for lying on. In Arabic the sense evolved out of the sense "something thrown down" from Arabic root tarah = "to throw". Classical Latin matta = "mat" is no relation. The word is in Catalan-Latin in the 12th century as almatrac. It is in Italian-Latin in the 13th century as matratium, almatracium, and similar. It spread into French and English in the 14th century. The mattress word at that time in Europe usually meant a padded under-blanket, "a quilt to lie upon". In standard Arabic today مطرح matrah means "location"; it does not mean mattress or rug or suchlike. But in medieval Arabic there is lots of documentation that, in addition to meaning "location", it had a meaning of a rug or padded fabric for lying on. A handful of medieval Arabic examples are given in Reinhart Dozy, year 1869 including from the writers Al-Tha'alabi (died 1038), Ibn Hayyan (died 1075), and Al-Qazwini (died 1283). The Cairo Geniza records of the 11th and 12th centuries contain many instances of Arabic matrah meaning a padded fabric for sleeping on – A Mediterranean Society: Volume IV, Daily Life, by S.D. Goitein, year 1967. A reason for confidence that the medieval European mattress word came from Arabic is that the word was sometimes spelled with al- prefixed in European languages. Some examples of that are given in Dozy's book and one additional example is the year 1291 Latin almatracium @ DuCange. The letter 'c' in the Latin almatracium | mataracium was pronounced as sound /s/. Medieval Latin also had almatracum | materacum where the 'c' was pronounced as sound /k/. The 'h' of the Arabic matrah is strongly aspirated. Especially when it occurs at the end of a word, there is nothing close to it in the Latinate languages (nor in English). It is denoted sound / ħ/. It was converted to /k/ in Catalan almatrac and /s/ in Italian materasso. In the European languages the word's earliest known records are in Catalan-Latin in legal notarizations spelled almatrazt (circa 1085), almatraf (year 1122), and almatrac (year 1134); more about those early instances is in the book La Terminologia Tèxtil a la Documentació Llatina de la Catalunya Altomedieval, by Laura Trias Ferri, year 2012. The mattress word in later-medieval Europe usually meant a somewhat padded underblanket, not a deep stuffed mattress, not a "featherbed". Sets of medieval examples are online at MED (in English), DMF (in French), TLIO (in Italian), Caracausi (in Sicilian), Gual Camarena (Catalan and Spanish), almadraque @ CORDE (in Spanish), Benecke Müller (in German), Matthias Lexer (in German), and Du Cange (in Latin) (Latin wordforms in Du Cange include matracium, matratium, matratum, mataratium, materatium, materacium, almatracum). In the early records in European languages in some cases the padding material was cotton fluff, which in those days was an import from Arabic lands and was a preferred material for padding fabrics. Example: year 1232 Italian-Latin materacum bombesi where bombesi = "cotton fluff". Example: year 1298 Italian una materazza... piene di bambagia = "a mattress filled with cotton lint". The Arabs slept on padded blankets which were rolled up and put away during the day, and spread out on the floor at bedtime; "they did not have beds properly speaking in the fashion of us French" – Devic year 1876; "everyone passing through the Middle East can understand how a word for a throw can lead to a word for a bed" – Lammens year 1890.


 * mecca : مكة makkah  Makkah is the central-most city of the Islamic world wherein people from all around the world congregate as pilgrims to perform the “Hajj”. In English, however, “Mecca” refers to an epicentre of a subculture, ethnicity, common interests/demographic or certain requirement group to gather at, that is established either formally or informally. For example, “New York City is the 'mecca' of the economic world”.


 * mohair, moiré : المُخيَّر al-mokhayyar, from Arabic مُخيَّر, high-quality cloth made from fine goat hair (from Arabic root khayar = "choosing, preferring"). Mohair from the hair of Angora goats in Ankara province in Turkey in the early 16th century was the original cloth named mohair in the West, although earlier mohair-type cloth had been imported from the Middle East under the name camlet. Earliest record in the West is 1542 Italian. Early English was spelled "mocayare", starting 1570. The mutation in English to "mohaire" is first seen in 1619.  Moiré means a shimmering visual effect from an interweaved or grating structure. It started out in French as a mutation of mohair.


 * monsoon, typhoon : These words referred to wind and rain events off the coasts of India and China in their earliest use in Western languages and are seen first in Portuguese in the early 16th century. Arabic sea-merchants were active in the East Indies long before the Portuguese arrived – see e.g. Islam in the Philippines and camphor and benzoin in this list. موسم mawsim (, season, used in Arabic for anything that comes round once a year (such as festive season) and used by Arab sailors in the East Indies for the seasonal sailing winds. In India, from October to April the winds blow from the northeast, while from April to October they blow approximately from the southwest (with heavy rains arriving in June); see monsoon of India. The first governor of Portuguese India, Afonso de Albuquerque (died 1515), often mentions the monsoon winds in his letters. He usually spells it mouçam. E.g. in a letter on 8 November 1514 he writes of trade goods which were "am de partyr nesta mouçam d abryll" = "to depart at this April's monsoon" – ref. The Portuguese ç is pronounced s. Mouçam is phonetically close to the Arabic mawsim. Diogo do Couto lived in Portuguese India in the 1560s, and consistently spelled it moução (ref: Yule & Burnell), which is close to the Arabic form as well -- the letter ã of Portuguese is 'a' with nasalization and is etymologically an 'an'. Portuguese usually replaces 'an' with ã. From the Portuguese word, an Italian traveler in India in the 1560s, Cesare Federici, writing in Italian, spelled it moson (ref: Yule & Burnell). But in Portuguese India during the 16th century the dominant wordform became monção, from causes not understood. English sailors in the late 16th century in India adopted it with spelling monson, from monção. In year 1442, Persian historian and ambassador Abd al-Razzaq Samarqandi sailed to India from the Persian Gulf, starting at the port of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf. He sailed back home again in 1444. He wrote in Persian a 45-page narrative of his trip. The following is a quote from a published English translation, plus three of his Persian words have been put in brackets together with alternative translation: "The favorable time for departing by sea [to India from the Persian Gulf]... is the beginning or middle of the monsoon [= موسم mawsim = sailing season]... The end of the monsoon [= آخر موسم ākher mawsim = last part of the sailing season] is the season [= زمان zamān = time] when tempests [= طوفان tūfān  = violent sea-storm] and attacks from pirates are to be dreaded.... The time for navigation having passed, every one who would put to sea at this season was alone responsible for his death, since he voluntarily placed himself in peril." – ref: Abd al-Razzaq Samarqandi in Persian (on page 344) and in English translation. An admiral in the Turkish navy, Seydi Ali Reis, traveled with Arabs on the Indian Ocean in the mid 1550s. He started out from the Iraqi port of Basra. Writing in Turkish in 1556, he says that when he was in Basra he had to wait for almost half a year for the arrival of what he called the mowsim = "sailing season" – ref, alt link. A century later, French traveller Jean de Thévenot set sail to India from Basra. Thévenot had lived in the Middle East for about five years previously and could speak Arabic. He wrote: "I set out from Balsora [i.e. Basra] on the sixth of November 1665.... The proper season for sailing on the Indian Sea is called mousson or monson by corruption from [Arabic] moussem. The season wherein there is a constant Trade Wind upon that Sea begins commonly at the end of October and lasts to the end of April." – ref: in French, in English translation. Arabic mawsim is from Arabic root wasem = "to mark" and Arabic grammar prefix m-. It is not hard to find mawsim in medieval Arabic in the sense of "season, time of year". E.g. botanist Ibn al-Baitar (died 1248) has المطر الموسمي al-matar al-mawsemī = "seasonal rain" (in a climate having rainy and rainless seasons) and he also has الموسم بمكة al-mawsem be-meka = "pilgrimage season" – ref. More historical details in Yule & Burnett, NED, Dozy, CNRTL.fr. طوفان tūfān, a big rainstorm, a deluge, and used in the Koran for Noah's Flood. The typhoon storm was written tufão in 1540 in Portuguese, touffon in 1588 in English, and tuffon in 1610 in English – all very close to the Arabic tūfān. The Koran uses this word for The Deluge in Sura29:Verse14 and the medieval Arabic dictionaries define tūfān also as "overwhelming rain" (http://www.Baheth.info ). The English word-form was later affected by the ancient Greek mythological demon Typhon – see typhon @ CNRTL.fr. It was perhaps also affected by a Chinese word tai feng. "Sometimes [typhoon is] claimed as a Chinese word meaning 'a great wind' [tai feng]... but this seems to be a late mystification." – Yule & Burnell. Other early records for the typhoon word in English include the following: tufan (1614), tuffon (1615), tufon (1625), tuffon (1626), tuffon (1665), tuffin (1674), tuffoon (1699), tuffoon (1721), tuffoon (1727), tuffoon (1745), tay-fun (1771), tiffoon (1773), tuffoon (1780), typhawn (1793), tuffoon (1802), ty-foong (1806), touffan (1811), typhoon (1819), toofan (1826), toofaun (1826), tiffoon (1831), typhoon (1832), typhoon (1840), tyfoon (1848), tufan (1850), typhoon (1851) – ref: NED; also Yule & Burnell. The first known record of the word-form "typhoon" in English is in 1819 in the classically educated poet Percy Bysshe Shelley who never went to the Indies or China. Turkish navy admiral Sidi Ali Reis (died 1563) travelled on Arab ships on the Indian Ocean in the 1550s and wrote in Turkish: "We left the port of Guador [in today's Pakistan] and again steered for Yemen. We had been at sea for several days... when suddenly from the west arose a great storm known as fil tofani [where fil = "elephant" in Arabic and Turkish].... As compared to these awful tempests, the foul weather in the Mediterranean and Black Sea is mere child's play and their towering billows are as drops of water compared to those of the Indian Sea." – ref. More about the early history of the two words among European sailors in the East Indies is in A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, and of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical and Discursive, by Yule and Burnell (year 1903).


 * mufti (clothing style): مَفتِي muftī, mufti (an expert in Islamic law). The phrase 'mufti day' is sometimes used instead of 'own clothes day' in some English speaking schools to mean a day when students and teachers can wear casual clothes or clothes in their own style rather than the institution's uniform or semi-uniform clothes. The term originated in the British Army in the early 19th century. It seems the term originated just because the clothing style of a mufti was much different from the style of the army's uniform clothing at the time.http://dictionary.com/browse/mufti


 * mummy : مومياء mūmiyā' , a bituminous substance used in medicine and in embalming, and secondarily sometimes it meant a corpse embalmed with the substance. The later-medieval Western languages borrowed the Arabic word in those senses. The Canon of Medicine of Ibn Sina (died 1037) has Arabic mūmiyā | mūmiyāyī = "medicinal bitumen". This is written in Latin as mumia in Gerard of Cremona's late 12th century translation of Ibn Sina's book. Among the first records in Latin is mumia = "medicinal bitumen" in the Arabic-to-Latin medical translator Constantinus Africanus (died c. 1087) (ref). Bitumen here means viscous tar found naturally in the ground with some sand or other minerals naturally mixed in to some degree. As offspring from the medieval Latin, the following is an example in an English medical book in 1475: "Make a plastir of bole and sandragon and mummie and sumac and of gum arabike" – MED. Another English example, this dated 1425, spelling modernised: "Another emplaister [plaster dressing] to the same, Take mummie, glue..bole armoniak, aloes, and half an ounce mastic" – MED. In later-medieval Europe this medicinal mummie was an import from the Eastern Mediterranean with much of it coming ultimately from Iran and Yemen – Histoire du Commerce du Levant au Moyen-âge, by W. Heyd, year 1886, Volume 2 pages 635–636. Studies on the embalming methods used by the ancient Egyptians to embalm and preserve the famous Egyptian mummies show: (1) the methods used were quite variable and (2) bituminous material was used in many cases and (3) wood tar or cedar oil was used in other cases and contributed to preserving the corpse in a black or near-black color in the long term – A History of Egyptian Mummies, by J.T. Pettigrew, year 1834, Chapter VI: On Embalming, especially pages 70–71. From the corpse's bituminous or tarry material and its black color, the term mūmiyā came to be applied to the whole corpse. This transfer of meaning started in Egypt. Abdallatif al-Baghdadi (died 1231) in his description of Egypt says a black bituminous matter taken from ancient embalmed corpses is available for purchase in Egypt under the name mūmiyā, and he says it is purchased to be used medicinally in the same way as the ordinary mūmiyā – ref. The medicines book of Ibn al-Baitar (died 1248) says that one of the sources of medicinal mūmiyā is the mūmiyā that is taken from old embalmed corpses found in the burial tombs in Egypt – ref. That kind of medicinal mumia, taken from ancient embalmed corpses of Egypt, made its way into medieval Latin medicines books as well – e.g. in Pandectarum Medicinae of Matthaeus Silvaticus, year 1317. Today's Arabic mūmiyāʾ means "mummy". Post-medievally in the West the sense was extended to a corpse preserved by desiccation (drying out).


 * muslin : مُوصِلي mūsilī, fine lightweight fabric made in Mosul in Mesopotamia, usually cotton, sometimes linen. The word entered Western Europe with the same meaning in the 16th and early 17th century. The fabric was imported from Aleppo by Italians at the time. The earliest record in English is muslina in a traveller's report from Aleppo in 1609. The ending -ina was an Italian addition. In Italian, a suffix -ina acts as a diminutive (communicates lightweight).Muslin meaning fine lightweight cotton fabric made in Mosul has it earliest record in European languages in the Latin writer Andreas Alpagus Bellunensis (died c. 1522), an Italian who lived in Damascus for decades. He spelled the fabric name as mussoli in Latin – he is quoted in Yule & Burnell (1903). Another early record is in the German traveller Leonhard Rauwolf, who travelled round the Levant in 1573–1575 and published a 350-page narrative of his visit. When talking about muslin in Aleppo, Rauwolf says the stuff is brought to Aleppo from Mosul, it is made from cotton, and the Arabs call it "Mossellini" – ref German 1582 edition (page 93) (Cf an English translation 1693 (page 62)). But Rauwolf's wordform Mossellini looks like it's the Italian merchants' wordform, because the Arabic wordform was mūsilī with no letter 'n' (Dozy 1869, Lammens 1890, CNRTL.fr), and -ini in Italian is a diminutive. Italian speakers dominated the commerce between Aleppo and Western Europe at that time. William Biddulph, an English traveller in Aleppo writing in 1609, says "muslina" is a type of cloth brought to Aleppo from Mosul, but he says it is made from linen – NED. The English word "shash" | "sash" entered English from Arabic shāsh at about the same time as muslin. The Arabic shāsh was a long ribbon of lightweight muslin wrapped to form a turban. It was many meters long. It could be of cotton or linen. A large part of the market for fine lightweight muslin in the Middle East in those days was for shāsh turbans. The Thousand and One Nights tales has Arabic وإلى رأسه شاش موصلي = "and on his head a shāsh mūsilī ". John Florio's Italian dictionary in 1611 has Italian mussolo defined as "a kind of head-attire or turbant that the Persians wear" – ref. Later in the 17th century and still today in Italian mussola = "muslin". Italian today also has mussolina = "fine muslin".

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

 * lilac : It is well documented that the common lilac tree was originally brought to Western Europe directly from Istanbul in the early 1560s. Among the earliest records of the tree and of the word in the Western European languages are in botany books in Latin by P.A. Matthiolus in 1565 and Carolus Clusius in 1576 stating that the "Lilac" tree was recently brought to Western Europe from the Turks and from Istanbul. The early history of the lilac plant in Western Europe is in the book The Lilac: a monograph, by Susan Delano McKelvey, year 1928, on pages 204–209. The species of lilac that was first grown in Western Europe is the Common Lilac (Syringa vulgaris). It was first introduced to Western Europe at or before 1563 by an ambassador of Austria stationed in Istanbul, ambassador Ogier de Busbecq. Busbecq sent specimens of the plant to the professional botanist Petrus Andreas Matthiolus, who at that time was employed by the Austrian rulers. The first published instance of the name is in a botany book by Matthiolus in 1565 in Latin. Matthiolus in 1565 said Austria's ambassador "Busbeke" brought the plant from Istanbul (Constantinople) under the name LILAC (Ref). Busbecq was stationed in Istanbul from 1556 to 1563. He is credited with being among the earliest to bring to western Europe several kinds of ornamental flowering plants, which he had found in cultivation in Istanbul. Busbecq said: "The Turks are passionately fond of flowers" (Ref). Busbecq planted lilacs at his house in Vienna in Austria in 1563, and it is possible that during the period 1557-1563 an associate of Busbecq in Istanbul may have distributed some lilacs to the West for planting. Those plantings are the earliest known lilacs to grow in any European gardens outside the Balkans – Ref, ref. The botanist Carolus Clusius lived in Vienna from 1573 to 1588 in the employment of the Austrian rulers. Lilac is in a botany book by Clusius in 1576, where Clusius says the plant has come from the Turks (Ref) and in a second edition in 1601 Clusius says the plant was brought from Istanbul specifically (Ref). The earliest known instance of lilac in French is in a Latin-to-French translation of Matthiolus's book in 1572 (Ref). The next known in French is in 1605 (Ref). The earliest known in English is in 1596 in the botanist John Gerarde, who mentions Matthiolus by name in connection with the plant ("Lylac Mathioli") (Ref). John Gerarde at that time had the plant growing in London. A book of Gerarde's in 1597 has a good drawing of a lilac branch and has a criticism of Matthiolus's plant description (ref: pages 1213-1215). Some of today's English dictionaries continue to say erroneously that the word lilac entered Western Europe by transfer from Arabic to Spanish (with no date given). Therefore, it is worth mentioning that today's Spanish dictionaries say the Spanish lila = "lilac" has been borrowed from the French (e.g. Diccionario RAE), which is to say that Spanish researchers have found no record in Spanish until some time after the records begin in French. The large Spanish database CORDE, although not all-inclusive, has no record in Spanish until 1772. "Lilac" is in English in the botanist John Gerarde in 1596 and 1597, a date which ranks among the word's earliest in any vernacular Western European language. The early word in Western Europe had the exclusive meaning of the common lilac tree (aka Syringa vulgaris). The tree's native place of origin was the Balkans, where it blooms in the wild with light-purple blue-ish flowers. There is reason to think the name may be descended from a Persian word for blue-ish color. The Persian is not attested as a tree or a flower; it is attested as a color. A route of intermediation involving Arabic is a slim possibility. The common lilac tree is popular in gardens in Russia and Canada. It will not bloom under cultivation in most Arabic-speaking locales because the winters are not cold enough; the tree requires a length of cold weather to set the buds for bloom – Refs: The Lilac: a monograph, by Susan Delano McKelvey, year 1928 on pages 212-215 and 230; and Lilacs: the genus Syringa, by John L. Fiala, year 1988, on pages 5, 13 and 15–18. The tree is native in upland areas of the Balkans, where it blooms with light-violet color, and it has not been demonstrated to be native anywhere else – same refs. In world history, the earliest recorded notice of the tree comes from 16th century Istanbul, where it was grown as an ornamental, and from where it was brought to northwestern Europe for the same purpose in the later 16th. The Balkans were part of the Turkish Empire at the time. However, the western European botanists at the time imagined that the Turks in Istanbul must have gotten the new tree species from somewhere in the Orient. It was not until more than two centuries later (beginning in 1828) that Western botanists discovered and confirmed it was native in the Balkans, and afterwards the earlier misperception was shaken off only gradually – "A visit to the home of the lilac", by Edgar Anderson, year 1935, pages 2 and 4. The tree does not have a known record in Arabic until two centuries after the records begin in English and French; fr:Ellious Bocthor (died 1821), an Egyptian who lived in northern France, seems to be the author of the first known record in Arabic – see e.g. Dozy, year 1869 page 297. The lilac tree is called люляк leulyak ("lewl-yak") in today's Bulgarian and liliac ("leel-yak") in today's Romanian. In Turkish, it is called leylak today, and it was called leylak or "lilac" in Turkish in the 16th century. The Turkish was the direct source of the Western European word (details above). It is possible that the 16th century Turkish tree-name leylak was originally sourced from the southern Balkans, since the tree itself certainly was. The quantity of writings from late medieval and 16th century Balkans languages is small, and it is small also in Turkish. For that reason and other reasons, evidence is not available to determine where the Turkish name came from.


 * macabre : Records begin in late medieval French (1376). All the early records involve "the very specific phrase danse macabre, which denoted a dance in which a figure representing death enticed people to dance with him until they dropped down dead." A non-Arabic candidate for the origin of the French exists but has semantic and phonetic weaknesses. The meaning can be fitted to the Arabic مقابر maqābir = "graves". Maqābir is frequent in medieval Arabic meaning a cemetery. Medieval Portuguese almocavar = "cemetery for Muslims or Jews" is certainly from the Arabic al-maqābir. But there is no known historical context for a transfer of the Arabic (via any pathway) into the French danse macabre. That is a major weakness.


 * mafia : Mafia comes from Sicilian mafiusu. Further etymology uncertain and disputed. Some propose an Arabic root for mafiusu; others say the word history prior to 19th century is unknown.


 * mask, masquerade, mascara, masque : Late medieval Italian maschera = "mask put upon a person's face" is the source for the French, English and Spanish set of words. The first known record in Italian is dated 1351 (occurring in Boccaccio's Decameron). The source for the Italian word is highly uncertain. One possibility is the Latin precedent masca = "witch". One other possibility is the Arabic precedent مسخرة maskhara = "buffoon, jester". In the context where mask was used, "the sense of entertainment is the usual one in old authors"; see Carnival of Venice, Masquerade Ball, Mascherata.


 * massage : The English comes from French. The French is first recorded in 1779 as a verb masser = "to massage" which then produced the noun massage starting in 1808. The origin of the French has not been explained. Most of the early records in French are found in accounts of travels in the Middle East. The practice of massage was common in the Middle East for centuries before it became common in the West in the mid-to-late 19th century; see Turkish bath. Consequently, there has been a proposal that the French word be from Arabic مسّ mass = "to touch". But the Arabic word for massage was a different word, namely tamsīd | dallak | tadlīk. The fact that the early records in French did not use an Arabic word for massage seems to preclude the hypothesis that the word they did use was borrowed from Arabic. A different hypothesis is the Portuguese amassar = "to knead" and/or Spanish amasar | masar = "to knead", which are descended from classical Latin massa meaning "mass", "lump of material" and "kneaded dough", and are longstanding commonplace words in Spanish and Portuguese for kneading of bread dough.


 * mizzen-mast : Mizzen (or mizen) is a type of sail or position of a sail-mast on a ship. English is traceable to 14th-century Italian mez(z)ana = "mizzen". The medieval mizzen was a smaller sail situated near the rear of the ship and its primary purpose was to improve steerage (it was not really for propulsion). Most dictionaries say the Italian word came from medieval native Italian mezzo meaning "middle", from a classical Latin word meaning "middle". But the mizzen sail does not have semantic concordance with "middle". The alternative is: "It is possible that the Italian word... is really adopted from Arabic ميزان mīzān = "balance". The mizen is, even now, a sail that 'balances,' and the reef in a mizen is still called the 'balance'-reef."


 * mortise : The word's origin in 13th-century France is without an explanation in terms of French or Latin. Some dictionaries mention an Arabic hypothesis.