Laccadives

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A chain of small coral islands in the Arabian Sea off the southwest coast of India, now known as Lakshadweep
2. The former name of an archipelago of coral atolls lying in the Arabian Sea off southwestern India
3. Coral islands in the Arabian Sea west of the Indian state of Kerala, forming a Union Territory of India today

Etymology: The name belongs to a chain of coral islands in the Arabian Sea, off the southwest coast of India, and it means "a hundred thousand islands." It comes from Sanskrit "lakṣadvīpa," where "lakṣa" means "a hundred thousand" and "dvīpa" means "island," and reached English through Prakrit "lakkhadīva," the vernacular form of that name. The shortened form "laccadives" is simply the plural-style ellipsis of "Laccadive Islands," the English name for the group. The name is an exaggeration, and a fitting one for a scattered archipelago. The islands number only around thirty-six, with about a dozen inhabited, so "a hundred thousand" was clearly a poetic way of saying "countless." The modern Indian union territory took the name Lakshadweep, which keeps the original Sanskrit spelling, and the English form preserves the older Prakrit-influenced pronunciation.