Vol. 09 · Loanwords ·South Asia ·1810s
Thug
from ṭhag (Hindi — "cheat, deceiver")
- Meaning
- Member of a ritual Indian strangler cult, as framed by colonial administrators.
- Source word
- ṭhag (Hindi — "cheat, deceiver")
- Route into English
- William Sleeman's 1830s anti-thuggee campaign brought the word home; it generalised to "any violent criminal" in British English by 1870.
- Arrived
- 1810s
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.