Vol. 09 · Loanwords ·Arabic ·1550s
Algebra
from al-jabr — "the reunion of broken parts"
- Meaning
- A surgical term for resetting a bone; used in al-Khwārizmī's 9th-c. title as a metaphor for rebalancing equations.
- Source word
- al-jabr — "the reunion of broken parts"
- Route into English
- Arabic → medieval Latin via Toledo translators → English via academic Latin in the 1500s.
- Arrived
- 1550s
From Arabic
Science, trade, and the Mediterranean transit of Andalusian scholarship gave English its Arabic stratum — especially in maths, chemistry, and commerce. Many entered through Latin or Italian.
English borrows.
Browse the full loanword atlas or explore another source language.