Mewari

Part of speech: noun, adjective

Definitions

1. A Rajasthani language spoken in the historic Mewar region of northwestern India ; a native or inhabitant of the Mewar region in Rajasthan
2. The Indo-Aryan language used in the former princely state of Mewar in Rajasthan ; someone born in or belonging to that Mewar territory
3. A regional tongue of the Rajasthan area centred on Udaipur ; a person whose origins lie in the traditional Mewar kingdom of northwest India

Etymology: Mewari is the name of a language spoken in the Indian state of Rajasthan, and the English word for it was borrowed from the language's own name for itself. The Hindi-script form मेवाड़ी (mevāṛī) is the adjective and noun derived from Mewar, the historic region centred on Udaipur whose name gives the language its label. In English, the word therefore names both the people and the tongue associated with that region, much as "Bengali" names both a language and the people who speak it. The word is a regional-language label rather than a term coined in English for scholarly ease, so its interest lies in the way it passes a place name into a language name. Mewari is closely related to Rajasthani and sits among the dialects that were once grouped together under broader labels in colonial-era and early linguistic surveys. Those surveys, not the speakers, were the chief source of the categories that English dictionaries now record.