Vol. 09 · Loanwords ·South Asia ·1850s
Khaki
from xākī
- Meaning
- A dusty brownish-yellow colour; cloth of that colour.
- Source word
- xākī
- Route into English
- Persian/Urdu *xākī* (dusty, from *xāk*, dust) → Anglo-Indian military → English. British regiments in India started dyeing white uniforms to blend with dusty terrain in the 1840s; the colour name followed the uniform into every army.
- Arrived
- 1850s
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.
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