Vol. 09 · Loanwords ·South Asia ·1800s
Tiffin
from tiffing
- Meaning
- A light midday meal; in India, a lunchbox meal.
- Source word
- tiffing
- Route into English
- From British dialect *tiffing* (sipping) → picked up in British India for a light snack or lunch → now especially associated with the stacked metal "tiffin carrier." Reverse-imported from British slang.
- Arrived
- 1800s
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.