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The following English words have been required either way 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 has 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. Rare and archaic 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
K Khalsa, Khalistan خالصة khalsa () 'pure, real, proper.'
Kermes (insect genus), kermes (dye), kermes oak (tree), kermesite (mineral) قِرمِز qirmiz (), dye from kermes-type scale insects including (but not limited to) today's Kermes insects. The bodies of several scale insect species produce a crimson dye that in medieval times was commercially valuable for dyeing textiles. Medieval Arabic dictionaries say al-qirmiz is an "Armenian red dye",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. which means dye from the Armenian cochineal insects of today's English, which are distinct from the Kermes insects. The word was in use in Arabic for centuries before it started to be used in European languages, and was adopted in Europe beginning in the late 13th century, in Italy, with the same meaning as the Arabic. In Europe the meaning began to be narrowed to today's Kermes species in scientific botany and taxonomy works of the mid 16th century.A number of distinct scale-insect species yield comparable but distinct red dyes. Kermes in English today refers to one of these, but the medieval Arabic name qirmiz usually referred to a different one of these -- the one now called in English "Armenian cochineal", obtained from insects of the genus Porphyrophora (different from the genus Kermes). Some examples of medieval Arabic writers who mention al-qirmiz and whose works are online in Arabic in text-searchable format at AlWaraq.net: Ibn Duraid (died 933), Ibn Abd Rabbih (died 940), Al-Istakhri (died c. 957), Al-Biruni (died 1048), Ibn Sida (died 1066). Additional medieval history is in "The Insect Dyes of Western and West-Central Asia", by R.A. Donkin, year 1977, 33 pages. In the later medieval centuries in English, French, Italian, Spanish, and Latin, today's Kermes dye was usually called grain or grana | granum. Kermes-like red dyes, including Armenian cochineal and Polish cochineal, were called in late medieval Italian chermisi | cremisi, which begot late medieval Latin chermes | kermes. The Latin and Italian spelling che- was pronounced KE-. One of the earliest scientific writers in Europe to use the Latin word chermes in the specifically restricted sense of today's Kermes was Pietro Andrea Mattioli in the 1540s (example in Latin). The word-form kermes entered English and French in the 16th century from the Italian-Latin chermes. More details about kermes are at English Words Of Arabic Etymological Ancestry: Note #59: Crimson and Kermes.
khat, cathinone قات qāt (), the plant Catha edulis and the stimulant obtained from it. Khat was borrowed directly from Arabic qāt in the mid 19th century. The technical botany name Catha was borrowed from the same Arabic in the mid-18th century (botanist was Peter Forskal).
kismet قسمة qisma (), destinity, fate. Kismet was borrowed into English via Turkish from the original Arabic word qisma which means portion or lot.
kohl (cosmetics) كحل kohl (), finely powdered galena, stibnite, and similar sooty-colored powder used for eye-shadow, eye-liner, and mascara. The word with that meaning was in many travellers' reports in English, from travellers in Arabic lands, for centuries before it was adopted natively in English.English traveller in the Middle East year 1615: "They put between the eyelids and the eye a certain black powder with a fine long pencil, made of a mineral called alcohole, which... do better set forth the whiteness of the eye." – ref. Similar travellers' reports in English are in ref: Algeria 1738, ref: Yemen 1794, and ref: Egypt 1877. Crossref alcohol which was transferred from the same Arabic word at an earlier time by a different pathway.
L