__NOTOC__ 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 have been used as the source for the list.The dictionaries used to compile the list are these: Centre National de Ressources Textuelles et Lexicales: Etymologies, Online Etymology Dictionary, Random House Dictionary, Concise Oxford English Dictionary, American Heritage Dictionary, Collins English Dictionary, Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Arabismen im Deutschen: lexikalische Transferenzen vom Arabischen ins Deutsche, by Raja Tazi (year 1998), A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (a.k.a. "NED") (published in pieces between 1888 and 1928), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English (year 1921) by Ernest Weekley. Footnotes for individual words have supplementary other references. The most frequently cited of the supplementary references is Glossaire des mots espagnols et portugais dérivés de l'arabe (year 1869) by Reinhart Dozy. Words associated with the Islamic religion are omitted; for Islamic words, see Glossary of Islam. Archaic and rare 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
A admiral أمير amīr (), military commander, also Emir. Amīr is common in medieval Arabic as a commander on land (not sea). In medieval Latin it has lots records as a specifically Muslim military leader or emir.A set of usage examples of medieval Latin amiræus, ammiratus, ammirandus, amirallus, admiratus, admiralius is in Du Cange's Glossary of Medieval Latin. In medieval Latin the word carrying the meaning of a specifically Muslim commander starts earlier than the meaning of a naval commander. The same is true in Old French. The earliest in Old French is in a well-known long ballad about war-battles between Christians and Muslims, the Chanson de Roland, dated circa 1100, which contains about three dozen instances of amirail or amiralz (plural) meaning exclusively a Muslim military leader on land – ref. Two late 12th-century examples with the same meaning are cited in the dictionary of Anglo-Norman French – ref. In French, the word meaning admiral of the sea has its first known record circa 1208 in the Crusader chronicler Geoffrey of Villehardouin (died circa 1212) - Ref. Later in medieval French, it is commonly spelled both amiral and admiral, with both spellings having both meanings – Amiral | Admiral @ Dictionnaire du Moyen Français. The same is true in late medieval English; see Amiral | Admiral @ Middle English Dictionary. A Latin record of a different kind comes from Sicily in 1072, the year the Latins defeated the Arabs in Sicily at the capital city Palermo. In that year, after about 300 years of Arabic rule in Sicily, a new military governing official at Palermo was assigned as "Knight, to be for the Sicilians the amiratus", where -atus is a Latin grammar suffix. This title continued in mainly non-marine use over the next century among the Latins at Palermo, usually spelled am[m]iratus; spelled amiraldus in year 1113 where -aldus is a Latin suffix that functions much the same as -atus;The Latin suffix -aldus | -aldi is discussed in An etymological dictionary of the French language, by A. Brachet, translated to English by G. W. Kitchin, year 1873, on page cix. The Sicilian Latin amiraldi year 1113 is cited in Arabismi Medievali di Sicilia, by Girolamo Caracausi, year 1983 on page 105. ammiral year 1112 influenced by Latin suffix -alis. In 1178 (and earlier) the person holding the title amiratus at Palermo was put in charge of the navy of the Kingdom of Sicily.An in-depth treatment of the origin and early history of the Western word "admiral" is in the book Amiratus-Aμηρας: L'Emirat et les Origines de l'Amirauté, XIe-XIIIe Siècles, by Léon Robert Ménager, year 1960, 255 pages, including chapter headed "La naissance du terme "amiral" ". A 1963 book review of Ménager's book has some info about the subject of the book in English in Journal Speculum, Vol 38 number 2, pages 371-373. The article "Le point sur l'origine du mot amiral", by Omar Bencheikh, 5 pages, year 2003 (published by Bulletin de la SELEFA), ONLINE, is primarily interested in showing that the Arabic amīr = "commander" was not in use meaning a sea commander in Arabic at the time when the Latins started using the word in the sense of sea commander in the 15th through 18th centuries. This is consistent with Ménager's documentation that the word evolved as a title of governance within Norman Sicily from an original meaning of a commander on land in Norman Sicily. More on the 12th-century amiratus in Norman Sicily is contained in the book The Administration of the Norman Kingdom of Sicily, by Hiroshi Takayama, year 1993. And more notes on the word's early history in the West are in Arabismi Medievali di Sicilia, by Girolamo Caracausi, year 1150 on pages 102-105 (in Italian) and Arabismen im Deutschen, by Raja Tazi, year 1998 on pages 184-186 (in German). After that start, the use of the word to mean an Admiral of the Sea was taken up in the maritime republic of Genoa starting in 1195 as amirato, and spread throughout the Latin Mediterranean in the 13th century. Medieval Latin word-forms included ammiratus, ammirandus, amirallus, admiratus, admiralius, while in late medieval French and English the usual word-forms were amiral and admiral.Amiral | Admiral @ Middle English Dictionary and Amiral | Admiral @ Dictionnaire du Moyen Français. The insertion of the letter 'd' was undoubtedly influenced by allusion to the word admire, a classical Latin word.
adobe الطوب al-tūb | at-tūb (),Arabic al- = "the". In Arabic where tūba means brick, "the brick" is written al-tūba but universally pronounced "at-tūba". Similarly, the written al-sumūt ("the paths") is always pronounced "as-sumūt". Similarly, al-nīl is always pronounced "an-nīl". This pronunciation applies to al- in front of about half of the Arabic consonants. In front of the other half the al- is pronounced al-. the brick. The word is in a number of medieval Arabic dictionaries meaning "brick". The Arabic dictionary of Al-Jawhari dated about year 1000 made the comment that the Arabic word had come from the Coptic language of Egypt.A number of large dictionaries were written in Arabic during medieval times. Searchable copies of nearly all of the main medieval Arabic dictionaries are online at Baheth.info and/or AlWaraq.net. One of the most esteemed of the dictionaries is Ismail ibn Hammad al-Jawhari's "Al-Sihah" which is dated around and shortly after year 1000. The biggest is Ibn Manzur's "Lisan Al-Arab" which is dated 1290 but most of its contents were taken from a variety of earlier sources, including 9th- and 10th-century sources. Often Ibn Manzur names his source then quotes from it. Therefore, if the reader recognizes the name of Ibn Manzur's source, a date considerably earlier than 1290 can often be assigned to what is said. A list giving the year of death of a number of individuals who Ibn Manzur quotes from is in Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon, volume 1, page xxx (year 1863). Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon contains much of the main contents of the medieval Arabic dictionaries in English translation. At AlWaraq.net, in addition to searchable copies of medieval Arabic dictionaries, there are searchable copies of a large number of medieval Arabic texts on various subjects. In European languages the early records are in medieval Spanish spelled adoba | adova and adobe with the same meaning as today's Spanish adobe, "sun-dried brick".Six instances of medieval Spanish adobes meaning sun-dried bricks are in the Libro de Palladio, dated 1385-1390, which is a Latin-to-Spanish translation of the agriculture book of Palladius (lived 4th century AD). The Latin original has sun-dried bricks in Book VI section xii. Text available in medieval Spanish, original Latin, and English translation. Earlier records for the word in medieval Spanish are cited in "Aportaciones filológicas a la documentación emilianense altomedieval", by Fernando García Andreva, year 2011, in journal Archivo de Filología Aragonesa, Volume 67, on page 248. Other cases of Arabic 't' becoming medieval Spanish 'd' include :es:Ajedrez, :es:Algodón, :es:Badana, :es:Badea.Glossaire des mots espagnols et portugais dérivés de l'arabe by R. Dozy & W.H. Engelmann. 430 pages. Published in 1869. The word entered English from Mexico in the 18th and 19th centuries.
afrit عفريت ʿifrīt (), an ancient demon popularized by the 1001 Arabian Nights tales. The word is also used in the Quran in chapter 27 verse 39. It refers to a type of jinn.