Nargile

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A water pipe used for smoking tobacco or other substances, featuring a bowl, a water chamber, and a hose
2. An apparatus commonly utilized in Middle Eastern cultures for the purpose of inhaling flavored tobacco through a filtration system
3. A device often associated with social gatherings, where users share the experience of smoking from a communal pipe filled with sweetened mixtures

Etymology: The surprise here is that the word for this pipe is named after a coconut. In Persian, "nargil" meant "coconut," and the water pipe got its name because its bowl was originally made from a coconut shell. The coconut itself has a long journey behind it: the Persian word came from a Sanskrit term, "narikela," and that word is thought to have come from a Dravidian language of southern India, where coconuts grew. The word then passed into Turkish as "nargile," and from Turkish into French as "narghilé," which is the form English borrowed. Its spelling varies, and "nargile" and "narghile" are both accepted. The Persian "nargil" referred to the fruit itself, so the pipe is named for the container it was built from rather than for anything about smoking.

Synonyms: hookah