FOOD FOR THOUGHT

A GASTRONOMIC GLOSSARY

Rupert Snell
HINDI URDU FLAGSHIP, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN

rupertsnell@mail.utexas.edu

Like most languages, Hindi has a wide range of expressions based on food and cooking. This short (and
infinitely extendable) glossary is a list of words which generate such idioms, or which have interesting
etymologies (given in square brackets at the end of each entry). Sanskrit (‘Skt’) etymologies are mostly from
R. L. Turner, A Comparative Dictionary of the Indo-Aryan Languages (London 1966), the essential reference
for informatiion about word origins. An asterisk indicates a hypothetical form — a Sanskrit etymon
reconstructed from the evidence of presumed derivatives in New Indo-Aryan languages.
Further idioms will be found in Bholanath Tiwari, Hind¥ muhåvarå koß, 3rd edn (Allahabad 1977);
many Anglo-Indian usages are discussed in Henry Yule and A.C. Burnell, Hobson-Jobson, 2nd edn
(London 1985) and Ivor Lewis, Sahibs, nabobs and boxwallahs: a dictionary of the words of Anglo-India
(Bombay 1991).
Both CDIAL (Turner) and Hobson-Jobson, together with many other invaluable dictionaries, are available
online at http://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/.

åaqa ‘wholemeal flour’. åaqe dal ka Bav malUm hona ‘to face the grim realities of life’
(literally ‘to know the price of flour and dal’); åaqe me# nmk ‘very little, in small
quantity (like salt in flour)’. [Skt *åatR ]

k¿|I f ‘a spicy curry made of pulse flour and yoghourt’; the word is not related to the
English word ‘curry’ (as sometimes alleged), which comes rather from Tamil
kar¥. [Skt ˚viTt ‘boiled’]

kaÅqa m ‘fork’ (also ‘thorn, spike’). [Skt kˆq ‘thorn’]

¿kIma m ‘minced meat’. ¿kIma krna ‘to make mincemeat of’ (either literally or
metaphorically). [Persian q¥ma ]
 FOOD FOR THOUGHT

kukurmu–a m ‘mushroom’ (literally ‘dog’s piss’). [Skt °mU§ ]

iKc¿\I f ‘a dish of boiled rice and dal cooked together, especially as the diet for a sick
person’. (‘Kedgeree’, the Anglo-Indian derivative, substitutes fish and egg for the
dal.) Metaphorically, ‘a hotch-potch, a mish-mash (French ‘salade’)’; ‘a mixed
form of language’; iKc¿\I pkana ‘to cook up a plan, to plot’. [Skt ikôa]

KIr m ‘milk and rice pudding’. qe¿|I KIr ‘a difficult task, a tough nut to crack’. [Skt
œIr ‘milk’]
iglas m ‘a glass, cup — anything to drink from’. [Eng. ‘glass’]
GI m ‘ghee, clarified butter used in cooking’ (increasingly substituted by vegetable-
based oils and fats, ghee being both expensive and unhealthy even if prestigious
and luxurious). GI ke dIye/icra¿g jlana ‘to celebrate’ (literally ‘to light ghee
lamps’); paÅco# ¨MglI GI me# hona ‘to be enjoying good times, to be in clover’
(literally ‘to have all five fingers in the ghee’).
cqnI f ‘chutney’ — a loan from Hindi to English. cqnI krna ‘to mash, to reduce to a
pulp’. [Skt *cfi- ‘to lick, taste’]

cna m ‘chickpea, gram’. lohe ke cne cbana ‘to do an arduous task’ (literally ‘to chew
iron chickpeas’). [Skt cN ]

cµmc m ‘spoon’. Cf. cmca ‘a sycophant, yes-man’. [Skt cms ‘sacrificial ladle’ ?]
cay f ‘tea’. [See Hobson-Jobson, ‘tea’, for etymology of both ‘tea’ and cay / ca ]

cavl m ‘rice’. Used in the plural in expressions such as mE#ne cavl bna´ hE # ‘I have
prepared rice’. Compare also Bat ‘boiled rice’, and Dan ‘paddy, the rice
plant’.
CurI f ‘knife’. b¿gl me# CurI muÅh me# ram-ram a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a pleasant exterior
concealing hidden malevolence (literally ‘a knife at one’s side, a greeting on the
lips’].
tva m ‘griddle, convex metal plate on which roti etc is baked’. tve kI bU˜d something
which lasts only a very short time, a flash in the pan (literally ‘a drop [of water]
on the griddle’). [Skt *tpk]

dal f ‘lentil, split pea’ — the staple vegetarian food, rich in protein. The word is from
the same root as dl ‘faction, group, political party’, with which it shares the

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‘split’ sense. Principal varieties of dal include mUÅg kI dal ‘green lentils’ (mUÅg kI
dal Kanevala ‘a wimp, a weakling’ — usually applied to a baniya); århr kI dal
‘pigeon pea’. Other idioms include: dal me# (kuC) kala hona ‘something fishy to
be going on, something to be amiss’; dal glna ‘a trick to succeed, a move to
come off’ (literally ‘dal to soften’). [Skt dal ]

nmk m ‘salt’. (iksI ka) nmk Kana ‘to eat (someone’s) salt’, i.e. to receive patronage or
sustenance from someone, and consequently to be indebted to that person; hence
nmk-hram ‘unfaithful, disloyal, ungrateful’ (to those who provide one’s
subsistence). nmkIn (as adj.) ‘salty, savoury, pretty, good-looking’ (this sense
has a parallel in Skt/Hindi lavˆy ‘loveliness’, from Skt lvN ‘salt’.); (as
noun) savoury snack. Gav pr nmk iC¿\kna ‘to pour salt on the wounds’. [Persian
namak ]
nan f ‘nan, thick unleavened bread cooked on the side of a tandËr (earthenware oven)’.
Cf. nanvaÈ m ‘baker, nan-seller’. [Persian nån ]

narMgI f ‘an orange’. The word is cognate with English ‘orange’, Italian ‘arancia’,
Spanish ‘naranja’ etc: loss of initial ‘n-’ in some of these forms is probably due
to confusion with the indefinite article, on the lines of ‘a norange > an orange’
(this is a reverse case to that of ‘algebra’ (Arabic al-jebr ) and ‘alchemy’ (Arabic
al-k¥m¥yå) where the definite article al- has become agglutinated to the noun in the
borrowed form of the word). [Skt narMg; Persian nåranj]

pap¿¿\ m ‘poppadum, a thin round fried crispbread’. (The English form is from Tamil
poppatam .) pap¿\ belna to be in dire straits, to have a very difficult task
(literally ‘to roll poppadums’). [?]
πyala m ‘cup’. Associated with the imagery of the ‘drinking cup’ in Persian poetry;
in everyday use, the English loanwords kp or iglas are often preferred.
[Persian pyåla ]
BajI f ‘vegetables (especially fried)’. [Skt BijRt ]

msala m ‘spice’. msaledar ‘spicy, seasoned’. msala i¿P¬m ‘a formula film lavishly
spiced with sex and violence’ . [Arabic ma∑åle˙ ]
mUlI f ‘radish; anything worthless’; (iksI ko) mUlI-gajr smJna ‘to regard (someone)
as worthless’ (literally ‘to regard as a radish or a carrot’). The range of senses

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of mUl is parallel to that of English ‘root’, Latin ‘radix’: hence adj. ‘radical’ etc.)
[Skt mUl]

meva m ‘dry fruit’. kr seva Ka meva ‘service entitles one to reward’. [Persian mewa ]

rs m ‘juice, essence’. The word is used very widely in a range of metaphorical senses,
including the extended meaning ‘aesthetic relish, flavour, enjoyment’, often with
erotic and/or metaphysical overtones. [Skt]
rsBrI f ‘raspberry’. Literally ‘full of juice’ — probably used in the specific sense of
‘raspberry’ through the irresistable parallel of the English word. [Skt]
raÈ f ‘mustard, mustard seed’; an image of something infinitely small, as in raÈ Br ‘a
very small quantity’, raÈ ka pvRt bnana ‘to make a mountain out of a molehill’.
[Skt raijka ]

rayta m ‘raita, a mixture of yoghourt with vegetable’. Note from the etymology that the
word is related to raÈ, which was once an ingredient. [Skt *raijkaitÃk ]

roqI f the generic name for bread of all kinds. ro¿jI roqI ‘daily bread’; roqI kp¿\a
‘means of subsistence, the necessities of life’; roqI kmana ‘to earn one’s
livelihood’; roqI-dal clana ‘to make ends meet, to manage somehow’. Cf.
\bl roqI ‘English loaf, western-style bread’ (with \bl ‘double’ here meaning
‘fat, swollen’). [Skt *rofi ]

l¸\U m ‘a heavy spherical sweetmeat’ (of which Ganesh was/is particularly fond). dono#
haT l¸\U hona ‘to be winning on all fronts, to be doing really well’; mn ke l¸\U
Kana ‘to be lost in false hopes, to build castles in the air’; l¸\U iKlana ‘to give a
feast, to treat’. [Skt l¸\u ]

xakaharI m/adj. ‘vegetarian’. [Skt, xak ‘vegetable’ + åhar ‘food’; cf. sag ]
sag m ‘vegetables, greens, spinach’. [Skt xak ]

s∫¿jI f ‘vegetable’ [Persian sabz ‘green, fresh’].

sUp m ‘soup’. Though the word appears in the very same form in Vedic Sanskrit, its
usage in modern Hindi is as a loan from English.
h¬dI f ‘turmeric’. h¬dI lgna ‘a wedding to take place’ (from the tradition of smearing
bride and groom with turmeric); h¬dI lgakr bEQna ‘to sit pretty, to sit idle’. [Skt
hir’a]

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hlva m ‘halwa’, a generic name for numerous varieties of sweetmeat or pudding. hlva
inkalna ‘to beat severely, make mincemeat of’ (cf. k
¿ Ima krna). [Arabic ˙alwå].