Hindoostanee

Part of speech: noun, adjective

Definitions

1. An old spelling for the Hindustani language of northern India ; a person born in or native to the region of Hindustan ; of or relating to Hindustan or its culture
2. The Hindustani language once written under this name in English ; someone originating from the Hindustan region of South Asia ; belonging to or characteristic of Hindustan
3. A former English spelling of Hindustani, the language of northern India ; an inhabitant of the historical Hindustan area ; describing anything connected with that region

Etymology: Hindoostanee is simply an older spelling of Hindustani, the language and the adjective that goes with it. The word is built from Persian pieces: "hindū" meaning "Hindu" or "Indian," "-stān" meaning "land" (as in Pakistan or Afghanistan), and an adjectival suffix "-ī" that turns the place into a description of people, things, or speech from that place. Hindustan itself is the land, and Hindustani is whatever belongs to it. The Persian form was borrowed into Hindustani, the lingua franca of northern India, which used both the Arabic-based script and the Devanagari script, so the same word appears in two alphabets. The spelling "Hindoostanee" is the older English transliteration, which people used in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and which now reads as dated. Its pronunciation and spelling were tied to colonial-era writing about the region.

Synonyms: Hindustani