Vol. 09 · Loanwords ·South Asia ·1610s
Pariah
from paṟaiyar
- Meaning
- A social outcast.
- Source word
- paṟaiyar
- Route into English
- Tamil *paṟaiyar* — a caste name, originally a drum-playing community → Portuguese → Anglo-Indian → English. The word's modern sense obscures the injustice it describes: a specific group stigmatised by the caste system, generalised by outsiders into a metaphor.
- Arrived
- 1610s
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.