English words that are secretly Urdu (and vice versa)
Shampoo, pajamas, bungalow, thug — the loanwords you didn't know were loanwords, and the ones going the other direction too.
I’ve written before about the weirdness of English words and why Chinese is hard. This one is for anyone who speaks both English and Urdu (or Hindi — most of this applies identically) and has never stopped to notice how much the two languages have swapped.
From Urdu/Hindi into English
Two centuries of British colonial presence in the subcontinent left English riddled with loanwords from Urdu, Hindi, and Sanskrit. Most English speakers use these words every day without ever thinking about where they came from.
- Shampoo — from chāmpo (چانپو), the imperative form of chāmpnā, “to press, to massage.” Originally a head massage offered in bathhouses. The product came later and took the name.
- Pajamas — from pāejāmah (پاجامہ), literally “leg garment” — pā (leg) + jāmah (garment). Originally loose trousers tied at the waist, which British colonists adopted as nightwear and brought home.
- Bungalow — from banglā (بنگلہ), meaning “of Bengal” or “Bengali style” — referring to a type of single-story thatched-roof house common in Bengal.
- Jungle — from jangal (جنگل), which in Urdu/Hindi means “forest” or “wilderness.” The word meant the same thing in both languages but English narrowed it to specifically dense tropical forest.
- Thug — from ṭhag (ٹھگ), originally meaning a member of a specific criminal brotherhood in 19th-century India. English took the word and genericized it.
- Loot — from lūṭ (لوٹ), “plunder, spoils.” Came into English via the British military.
- Cot — from khāṭ (کھاٹ), a light bedframe.
- Cushy — from khushī (خوشی), “happiness, pleasure.” Went from “pleasant” to “easy” in British army slang.
- Chutney — from chaṭnī (چٹنی).
- Khaki — from khākī (خاکی), literally “dusty” or “earth-colored” — khāk meaning “dust, earth.” Named for the color of the British Indian Army’s drab uniforms.
- Pundit — from paṇḍit (پنڈت), a learned Hindu scholar. English kept the “expert” meaning but stripped the religious specificity.
- Verandah — ultimately Persian but transmitted into English through the subcontinent.
- Shawl — from shāl (شال). (Originally Persian, but came into English via the subcontinent.)
- Bangle — from bangṛī (بنگڑی).
- Dungaree — from dungrī (ڈنگری), the name of a rough cotton cloth from a district of Mumbai.
From English into Urdu
The traffic goes both ways, and in modern Urdu it arguably runs heavier the other direction. Post-colonial and globalized English has left Urdu full of loans — especially in science, technology, bureaucracy, and daily urban life. Many have been absorbed so thoroughly that speakers don’t mark them as foreign.
- ٹکٹ (ṭikaṭ) — ticket
- اسٹیشن (isṭeshan) — station
- پولیس (pulis) — police
- ہسپتال (haspatāl) — hospital (originally from English/French “hospital”)
- کمپیوٹر (kampyūṭar) — computer
- موبائل (mobāīl) — mobile (phone)
- بس (bas) — bus
- ٹیکسی (ṭaiksī) — taxi
- اسکول (iskūl) — school
- کالج (kālij) — college
- فون (fon) — phone
- ریڈیو (reḍiyo) — radio
The interesting pattern
Look at the two lists side by side and a pattern jumps out: the words moving from the subcontinent into English are almost all old — domestic life, clothing, cloth, food, landscape, social categories. The words moving from English into Urdu are almost all modern — technology, transportation, institutions, administration.
That isn’t a coincidence. It’s a map of the colonial and post-colonial power gradient in microcosm. The earlier flow was British colonists absorbing the parts of subcontinental life they encountered daily. The later flow is subcontinental languages absorbing the vocabulary of a global technological order that happened to be anglophone.
Languages never borrow randomly. They borrow what they need, and what they need tells you the shape of the relationship.
The bonus
Some words came full circle. Cushy, for example, left Urdu as khushī, became English slang, and is now occasionally used by Urdu speakers in its English form with the English meaning. Pajama left as bedwear and came back as a globalized item of clothing. Languages aren’t rivers flowing in one direction — they’re weather systems, and the same words circulate and transform and come back wearing different hats.