20-20: English words you didn’t know were of Indian origin:

Alright, everyone knows Bungalow, Pajamas/Pyjamas, Junta, Cheetah, Cummerbund, Guru, Jungle, Cashmere, Khaki (colour of dust, in Urdu), Gymkhana, Coolie(from the Tamil ‘Coolie’), Veranda, Loot, and of course, Yoga. I even read somewhere that ‘bifurcate’ is of Indian origin, but I couldn’t find out more about that.

Ok, I’ll start with some pretty obvious ones and go down to unusual and shocking.

1. First one on our list is Juggernaut. As it sounds, it has its origins in the name of Lord Vishnu, Jagannath. (Wikipedia says: During the British colonial era, Christian missionaries promulgated a falsehood that Hindu devotees of Krishna were lunatic fanatics who threw themselves under the wheels of huge chariots in order to attain salvation. In rare instances in the Jagannath yatra festival's past, people had been crushed accidentally as the massive 45-foot-tall, multi-ton chariot slipped out of control, with others suffering injury in the resulting stampedes. This sight led the Britons of the time to contrive the word "juggernaut" to refer to examples of unstoppable, crushing forces.)
   
2. Second one is on the list is the fruit drink Punch(made of fruit juices mixed with water or soda water, with or without alcohol). This word originates from ‘pancha’ (Sanskrit), meaning ‘five’, because of the five ingredients used: spirit/soda, sugar, lemon, water and tea/spices.
   
3. Cool number one: Bandana: from ‘bandhna’, to tie. (Hindi, Lucknow). We started a fashion trend!
   
4. Surprising entry number one: Chit(yeah, the piece of paper with writing on it) has originated from Chitthi, a letter(Hindi)!!!
   
5. Number two is: Mango. This is from ‘maangai’ in Tamil, for Mango.
   
6. An animal makes it to the list too. Mongoose is from the Marathi word for the same, Mangus.
   
7. A Malayalam word, Chakka, is what gave birth to Jack Fruit. More interestingly, Coir came from the Mallu word kayaru, which in turn was borrowed from Kayir, in Tamil.
   
8. On a slightly dull, yet bright note, Opal is from Sanskrit Upalah. Another stone, Marakata, travelled all the way to the Greek language, and then Latin under the guise of smaragdus, and became the English Emarald.
   
9. The scaly reptiles are here! Serpent is from the Sanskrit Sarpam.
   
10. The next reptile has a weird avatar here. Apparently fashionable Victorian purses were made of crocodile skin. The Hindi word for croc is Magar/ mugger. Street robbers were thus called Muggers.
    
11. Surprise number three: Sugar is from Middle Latin succarum, from Arabic sukkar and Persian shakar ultimately from Sanskrit sharkara.
    
12. Another word for ‘sugar’ in Sanskrit is Khanda. This one travelled to Persia, and then to France as Sucre Candi, and then to England in the form of Candy. (Cool number two)
    
13. An interesting one is Zen. Yes, it’s Japanese, for meditation. The Chinese called it ch’an. And we called it, Dhyaana(Sanskrit).
    
14. Rice is from where the most Rice is eaten (as far as popular jokes go, at least): in Tamil, it is arisi.(Cool! again....)
    
15. When our elders wanted a massage, they would ask their slaves to champu(Hindi, verb) their scalp. Today, it led to Shampoo.
    
16. In Tamil, people call money, kaasu. In English, we call it, Cash. (pretty shocking, isn’t it? and amazing!)
    
17. For the Chemistry geeks, Indians knew of a chemical and they called it Sulvari. In Latin, it became Sulfur. You know what it is now.
    
18. Going back to the roots of English(or Maths): The numbers Eight and One are from their Tamil equivalents: yettu and onru.(amazing!)
    
19. Going back to the roots of our own birth, two words that people all over the world use and are most sentimental about are Mother and Father. They have their own roots in Sanskrit, Matru and Pitru.(awesome!!)
    
20. I wanted to put the last one as the best, but this one is the most amazing of all! In Tamil Nadu, people were terrified of snakes(yet another reptile!) that could gobble up elephants! They called it, aanai kondan, literally meaning, elephant killer. The rest of the world was too lazy to invent a new word, so they pronounced it, Anaconda!!!