Arabic is one of the oldest languages in the world, dating back to approximately 512 BCE, with 310 million native speakers worldwide as of 2016. While some consider that the language has been slowly dying in recent years, especially in countries such as the United Arab Emirates, its inspiration into other languages lives on in words we unknowingly use everyday, especially in the English language. 1. Alcohol According to the Oxford English dictionary, the word Alcohol originates from the Arabic world al-kuḥl ‘the kohl’, which in early use referred to powders, specifically kohl, and especially those obtained by sublimation; later ‘a distilled or rectified spirit’ in the mid 17th century. 2. Magazine The word magazine originally meant warehouse or place for storing goods in the 1580s, which originated from the Arabic makhazin, plural of makhzan “storehouse”, from khazana “to store up.” According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the original sense of the word is now almost obsolete. 3. Ghoul Ghoul, meaning a legendary evil being that robs graves and feeds on corpses, is according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary of Arabic origin, coming from ghūl, which comes from ghāla, meaning “to seize”. 4. Sofa The…
