Updates

This is the history of this dictionary:

• 2010-08-23: Started to link difficult urdu words from sher-o-shairi, my other blog, to this one
• 2010-08-22: Changed weblog theme, altered formatting and added more words found in Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s “Ham dekheṇge” and Ghalib’s “hazaaroṇ kwaahisheṇ aise“
• 2009-08-27: Uploaded work to blog
• 2005-09-09: Final compilation of work

Directions

On this site, the Urdu words are romanized and arranged in an English alphabetical order. This is not a comprehensive dictionary; it is intended to list words commonly found in Urdu poetry.

To look up a word, click on the first letter under ‘Table of Contents‘ the right column. Since this is a transliteration, I may have used a different letter than you are trying to find; consider alternative spellings as well.

For a better understanding, go through sections 6, 7 and 8. For my pleasure, look at sections 3 and 5. For your warning, read section 4.

Cover Page

The First Incomplete

Urdu to English

Dictionary

(Romanized & Alphabetized)

Dedication

This work is dedicated to my wife, who has allowed me space to spend time in doing silly things like this. In addition, I am so glad she works, so I can afford the latest computer hardware and software that allow me to do these silly things.

Since this could be the only work I publish, I would like to go ahead and include my two wonderful daughters as well. They have been very undemanding (except for money) and have allowed me to remain locked in my room while they are busy with their own lives.

I would be remiss if I forget Mr. Dinesh Prabhu, whose efforts made it possible for me to piece together this dictionary in the first place.

.

September, 2005

Copyright Information

Copyright © Atul Barry, 2005

First Edition published, printed and designed by Atul Barry in September 2005

This work is distributed free of charge, subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be sold or hired out without the publisher’s prior consent, by any means, electronic, print, fax or otherwise.

However, as long as no money is involved, this work may be, but only for personal use, printed, or redistributed in any form, either by transmission as an attachment to email, printing, scanning or uploading on the Internet, but without any change in its content or format.

Any suggestions, complaints or felicitations may be sent to abarrymd@att.net

Preface

As someone wrote, please read this preface for your satisfaction and mine.

No one can claim the authorship of a dictionary; it is essensially a collation of words and their meanings. This is all I have done. The sources of this collection are many, taken from different websites and dictionaries, though I have added a few words on my own as well. In fact, this work has turned out to be more of a thesaurus than a dictionary.

This has been a labor of love, and I did this because I am unable to find an Urdu – English dictionary that is sorted alphabetically in English. I did find a dictionary that had Urdu words in roman script, but were arranged sequentially by the letters of the Urdu alphabet. Mr. Prabhu’s original work is also similar. To a person like me, who doesn’t know the Urdu script nor is familiar with the alphabet, looking up words can be daunting task.

This dictionary is by no means complete, and hence the title. I do not claim to be a wordsmith, so if you happen to find any mistakes or omissions, in either meanings or grammatical notations, please let me know at abarrymd@att.net. In addition, if you want to send me more words to add to this dictionary/thesaurus, please feel free to do so, but use the same format that is used in this work.

Enjoy.

Atul Barry

Louisville, KY

9 September 2005

Introduction

This small work is collated for people, like me, who enjoy listening to ghazhals and reading Urdu poetry in Hindi or English, but are unable to get the essence of the piece because they are stuck not knowing the meaning of a word or two. The arrangement is strictly according to the English alphabet, with the Urdu words being transliterated into roman characters. No attention has been paid to the sequence of letters of Urdu alphabet or the grouping of the words therein.

The user will be able to find words as they ‘sound’ in English. To aid the phonetics, a vowel pronunciation key is provided (see category ‘Vowel Pronunciation Key’). Unlike English, Urdu nouns have a gender, and this is mentioned in column 3 before the word meaning. The origin of the word is also given in column 2, right after the word. For the grammatical and word origin abbreviations, please click on ‘Abbreviations’ under the ‘Table of Contents’.

Many words have their own meaning but they also form complex words; I have used blue highlighting for these and the other words they form. Some words are merely prefixes that cannot be used alone; such prefixes and words they are used with are highlighted in green. To emphasize this, the prefixes and the suffixes are written as two separate ‘words’, even though they are spoken as one. So that the reader may recognize how these words are formed, they are given below the prefix, even though at times this has violated the strict alphabetical order; hopefully he can thus have a better understanding of their meaning.

Some words that can belong to different parts of speech are listed twice.

Vowel Pronunciation Key

a: “u” in “but”

aa: “a” in “far”

e: “e” in “bed”

i: “i” in “fit”

ee: “ee” in “feet”

o: “o” in “code”

u: “u” in “put”

oo: “oo” in “booed”

au: “ow” in “how”

ai: “ei” in “neighbor”

Notes:

1. ‘ indicates a glottal stop (pronounced like “uh”) in very careful speech. Normally, however, it is not pronounced at the beginning of a word; in other positions, it represents ‘aa’.
2. The combination ‘ah’ at the end of a word is pronounced like ‘aa’ or ‘e’. For example, ‘jagah’ could be ‘jagaa’ or ‘jage’, i.e., the h is silent.
3. The combination ‘ah’ or ‘aH’ in the middle of a word is pronounced like ‘e’.
4. n. (n period) indicates nasalization.
5. a – is used to distinguish between sh and s+h, kh and k+h, etc.

Abbreviations

Grammatical

n.f.: noun feminine

n.m.: noun masculine

pron.: pronoun

adj.: adjective

v.: verb

adv.: adverb

conj.: conjunction

intj.: interjection

prep.: preposition

suff.: suffix

pref.: prefix

fig.: figurative

plu.: plural

lit.: literal

poet.: poetic

Word Origin

P : Persian

A : Arabic

T : Turkish

H : Hindi

S : Sanskrit

G : Greek