In honor of the Muslim festival of Eid al-Fitr, which signals the close of the month-long Ramadan fast and takes places at sundown this evening, we bring you a new vocabulary list:
English for the most part is dominated by words with Germanic roots, as well as a lot of Latin and even a little bit of Greek. English words derived from Arabic for the most part have to do with chemistry, astronomy, or mathematics, and entered Europe following the Renaissance, as many scientists and philosophers looked to the texts of the Arab World and their translations of classical works.
The words on this list, including alcohol, carafe, and spinach took a different path to English, traveling first through Portuguese and Spanish, as Iberia was under the control of Arabs from 710 - 1492 AD and the Portuguese and Spanish lived in close proximity to Arabic on a daily basis.
