tamasha
English
editEtymology
editBorrowed from Marathi तमाशा (tamāśā), from Classical Persian تماشا (tamāšā), ultimately from Arabic مَشَى (mašā, “to walk”).
Noun
edittamasha (countable and uncountable, plural tamashas)
- A visual art form from Maharashtra, India, involving singing and dancing.
- c.1885, A.L.O.E. The Wondrous Sickle
- We had fine clothes, and feasting, and drum-beating, and fireworks let off in our village. It was a grand tamasha!
- c.1885, A.L.O.E. The Wondrous Sickle
- (colonial India, historical) Any traditional indigenous public ceremony.
- 1915, Valentine Williams, With Our Army in Flanders, page 287:
- I went to a Tamasha, as the Indian troops call these affairs, one fine Sunday afternoon in May. A broad plateau in the middle of the fields had been selected for the sports, and when I arrived an enormous crowd, as picturesque as any I have ever seen, was thronging round the ropes.
- 2014, James Lambert, “A Much Tortured Expression: A New Look At `Hobson-Jobson'”, in International Journal of Lexicography, volume 27, number 1, page 60:
- This superficial description is all the information the text has on the subject of the Muharram, and it is clear that to the author such activity was to be regarded as a tamasha, an outlandish ceremony of value to the foreign visitor only as a spectacle.
Alternative forms
editAnagrams
editSwahili
editEtymology
editBorrowed from Classical Persian تماشا (tamāšā).
Pronunciation
editNoun
edittamasha class IX (plural tamasha class X) or tamasha class V (plural matamasha class VI)
Categories:
- English terms borrowed from Marathi
- English terms derived from Marathi
- English terms derived from Classical Persian
- English terms derived from Arabic
- English lemmas
- English nouns
- English uncountable nouns
- English countable nouns
- English terms with historical senses
- English terms with quotations
- en:India
- Swahili terms borrowed from Classical Persian
- Swahili terms derived from Classical Persian
- Swahili terms with audio pronunciation
- Swahili lemmas
- Swahili nouns
- Swahili class IX nouns
- Swahili class V nouns
- sw:Parties