Vol. 09 · Loanwords ·South Asia ·1780s
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from avatāra
- Meaning
- A descent — particularly of a deity taking earthly form.
- Source word
- avatāra
- Route into English
- Sanskrit → English via 18th-century Orientalist translations of Hindu scripture. The digital-character sense (a video-game body) dates only to 1985.
- Arrived
- 1780s
From South Asia
Three centuries of British colonial contact — East India Company, Raj, military, domestic life — deposited a distinct Hindi/Urdu/Bengali/Sanskrit layer in everyday English.
English borrows.
Browse the full loanword atlas or explore another source language.