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minaret

Arabic manāra, 'place of fire or light', meant a lamp-stand or lighthouse before it meant a mosque's tower; Persian manār gave Hindi mīnār, Swahili and Malay made it any tower, and a Turkish pronunciation reached French as minaret, and English in the 1680s.

Weakest linkCertain

The road to English

From French to Russian

From French to German

From French to Spanish

From Ottoman Turkish to Turkish

From Arabic to Malay

From Arabic to Swahili

From Arabic to Persian, Hindi

800 CEArabic

Hops are evenly spaced; labels show the year each form is first attested.

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