Vol. 09 · Loanwords ·South Asia ·1780s
Mulligatawny
from miḷaku-taṇṇīr
- Meaning
- An Anglo-Indian curry soup.
- Source word
- miḷaku-taṇṇīr
- Route into English
- Tamil *miḷaku-taṇṇīr* ("pepper water," a thin spiced broth) → English via British colonial kitchens, where it was thickened and served as a soup course in the Anglicised Victorian style.
- 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.