Amman

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The capital city of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, located in the northwest of the country ; a place that serves as the largest urban centre of that nation
2. The political capital of Jordan, a major city in the Middle East ; the most populous urban area within that Arab country
3. Jordan's seat of government and principal metropolitan centre, situated on hills in the north of the kingdom ; its biggest city by population

Etymology: Jordan's capital takes its name from the Ammonites, a people whose kingdom lay east of the Jordan River in the Iron Age, with its main town, Rabbath-Ammon, on the site of the modern city. The Greeks later renamed the town Philadelphia, but the older name survived in local speech, and the Arabic "ʕammān" preserves the Ammonite name, which English took directly from Arabic. A second, unrelated "amman" comes from Tamil "ammaṉ," a word meaning mother that is used for the village goddesses of southern India. The two words share a sound by coincidence, and the English form is simply a transliteration of the Tamil.