nullah

[prettygoodword]

nullah (NUHL-uh) - (S. Asia) n., a gully or ravine, esp. one that is dry except during the rainy season.


Flowing only during the monsoon. From Bengali nala and/or Hindi/Urdu nālā, both meaning ravine/drainage, from Middle Indic nāḷa, tube/hollow stalk, from Sanskrit nāḍī, reed.


Thanks, WikiMedia!

---L.

Comments

[fluffybeaver]

"Nal" is an Indian training stone with a hole in the middle. Zero is in English, and in Slavic (their root is Indo-European) Zero is "Nul ", that is, a circle with a hole.The meaning is the same.

[prettygoodword]

Interesting thought, but nullah and null have different PIE roots: both English null and Russian нуль (in the latter case, via borrowing from German) are from Latin nūllus, from Proto-Italic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Italic_language *noinolos, from *ne oinolos, from ne, not + *oinos https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Italic/oinos, one (so "not any"), the latter from Proto-Indo-European https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_language *óynos https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/%C3%B3ynos, one, while that Sanskrit root of nullah is naḍa, a species of reed, from Proto-Indo-Iranian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-Iranian_language *nada https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-Iranian/nada&action=edit&redlink=1 , meaning ... reeds in general? I've lost the trail here.

[fluffybeaver]

Thank you. I don't have such deep knowledge.

[prettygoodword]

Neither do I, really -- I had to look it all up.