| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000. |
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| pal |
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| PRONUNCIATION: |  p l |
| NOUN: | Informal A friend; a chum. | | INTRANSITIVE VERB: | Inflected forms: palled, pal·ling, pals
To associate as friends or chums. Often used with around. | | ETYMOLOGY: | Romany phral, phal, from Sanskrit bhr t, bhrtr-, brother. See bhrter- in Appendix I. | | WORD HISTORY: | Pal, like buddy and chum, has an informal, thoroughly “American” ring to it. Its source, though, is rather unusual—Romany, the Indic language of the Gypsies. First recorded in English in the 17th century, pal was borrowed from a Romany word meaning “brother, comrade,” which occurs as phal in the Romany spoken in England and phral in the Romany spoken in Europe. Gypsies speak an Indic language because they originally migrated to Europe from the border region between Iran and India. In other Indic languages we find related words meaning “brother,” such as Hindustani bhi and Prakrit bhda or bhy; they all come from Sanskrit bhrt, which in turn traces its ancestry to the same Indo-European word that our word brother does.
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| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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