Deolali

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A town in the Indian state of Maharashtra, located near the city of Nashik in the western part of the country
2. A place name referring to a town in Maharashtra, India, known for its historic British military cantonment
3. The name of an Indian town in Maharashtra state, situated in the Nashik district of the western Deccan region

Etymology: Deolali was a British military transit camp near Nashik, set up in the 1860s, where soldiers and their families were held for weeks or months while waiting for ships home. The waiting, the heat, and the boredom wore on people, and a fever that could leave a man delirious was known there as "Deolali tap," using the Hindi "tap" for fever. The place name itself has an uncertain origin, and sources do not agree on its derivation. The place gave English one of its odder slang words. "Doolally," meaning eccentric or mad, is generally traced to the camp, likely via the phrase "Deolali tap" and the reputation of the men stuck there. The shift from a town's name to a word for madness happened within British army slang, and the link is well documented enough to be taken seriously, though the exact early wording is hard to pin down.