Vol. 09 · Loanwords ·South Asia ·1830s
Nirvana
from nirvāṇa
- Meaning
- Liberation from the cycle of rebirth; a state of bliss.
- Source word
- nirvāṇa
- Route into English
- Sanskrit *nirvāṇa* (extinguishing, as of a flame) → English Buddhist/scholarly writing → general vocabulary. The secular sense ("shopping nirvana") is a 20th-century dilution; the original sense is specific to Buddhist soteriology.
- Arrived
- 1830s
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.