Firangi

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /fiɹʌŋɡiː/

Definitions

1. A label for an individual belonging to a foreign ethnicity, especially Europeans, commonly used in South Asian contexts to emphasize an outsider's status
2. A descriptive term for someone with a non-local heritage, particularly reflecting Western influence, used in various South Asian cultures
3. A term used in South Asia to identify a person from a foreign land, particularly of European descent

Etymology: In South Asia, "firangi" was a word for a European, and its path into the region runs through the Crusades-era Latin-speaking West. The Persian "farangi" was borrowed from Old French "franc", the same word that gave English "franc" as a coin and "frank" as an adjective. The word therefore carries a Frankish ethnic name, since the Franks were the people who gave their name to much of medieval Western Europe as seen from the East. The Persian form then passed into Hindustani as "firaṅgī", with the same meaning of a foreigner from Europe. Its sense is ethnic and geographic rather than national, so it covered Portuguese, Dutch, French and British visitors alike, which is why the word appears so often in colonial-era writing on India. The English word "frank" and the Persian-derived "firangi" are doublets: two words from the same French source that took separate routes into different languages.