ABSTRACT
Many words of Arabic origin have found their way into English, either directly or by way of other languages including French, Italian, Persian, Spanish and Turkish. The oldest borrowings date back to the Crusades and are found in almost all west European languages. Among these are:
albatross admiral alchemy alcohol alkali algebra elixir zenith zero
words that emphasise the pre-eminence of Arabic scholars of the period in astronomy, mathematics, medicine, science and seafaring. Arabic numbers, too, were borrowed, and thus all literate speakers of European languages would recognise 1, 2, 3 although English speakers would call them ‘one, two, three’ and French speakers ‘un, deux, trois’.
