How Indian Words Entered English
“Shampoo,” “bungalow,” and “pyjamas” became familiar English words through British contact with India, but each began as a name for a practice or form of life already familiar there. Shampoo traces to Hindi chāmpo, a command associated with massaging or pressing. A bungalow takes its name from bangla, meaning “Bengali” or “in the Bengal style,” and came to describe a kind of house. Pyjamas came into English from Urdu, which used a word for leg garments with roots in Persian.
These words did not travel alone. They moved with routines, clothing, and styles of building that British people encountered in India. Repeated use made unfamiliar things easier to talk about—and eventually made the borrowed words seem simply English.
The Power Hidden in Everyday Speech
The borrowing happened amid British colonial rule, an unequal relationship in which Britain held political power over India. Yet language exchange was not a one-way process: English speakers adopted Indian words because they needed names for things they encountered and, in some cases, came to use themselves. Everyday speech could preserve that contact even after speakers forgot where a word came from.
That forgetting matters. A word can carry a trace of the people and customs that supplied it while its history disappears from ordinary conversation. Saying “bungalow” rarely prompts a thought about Bengal; “shampoo” sounds like a routine part of getting ready. The words make colonial contact audible, even when the power imbalance that shaped it is no longer obvious.
