tulipant

[prettygoodword]

tulipant (too-li-PANT) - n., (obs.) a turban; (obs.) a tulip.


This and both of the words it means all come from Turkish tülbent, turban, from Classical Persian dulband/dōlband, turban, from dōl/dawl, revolving, + band, band/tie. Yes, the flower is named after turbans, for a supposed resemblance. For both meanings, tulipant was only used in the 17th century. And no, Wimsey didn't use the word, nor Sayers for that matter -- it was in a chapter epigraph taken from The Anatomy of Melancholy, which is just about the most 17th century prose work to have ever prosed.

---L.

Comments

[peasina]

Tulips are my favourite flower so I’m delighted to learn this word and its meaning!

[prettygoodword]

My work here is done.

[dickinsons]

That's amazing! I love it when I find out a word has Farsi roots. It's always something I can discuss with my Iranian friend :D

[prettygoodword]

There’s a fair amount of words we got from Arabic that Arabic got from Old Persian — though a fair number of those originally came from Sanskrit. It’s as if, I dunno, there were major trade routes through those regions or something.

[dickinsons]

Yeah, that's what I love about etymology! A bit of history in every word. And my first language is Spanish so we also have a lot of words of Persian origin through the Arabic legacy of Al-Andalus.

[prettygoodword]

And my local dialect of English, here in Southwestern United States, has several words from Spanish, some of which are ones from Arabic, such as adobe. I'd have to dig to find out how many of those are Persian-origin.