Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun An Indic language that is the official literary language of Pakistan, essentially identical to Hindi in its spoken form but in its literary form heavily influenced by Persian and Arabic and written in an Arabic alphabet.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A native name for the present Hindustani tongue. See Hindustani. Also used adjectively.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The language more generally called Hindustanee.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • proper noun An Indo-Iranian language with native speakers mainly in Pakistan and North India.
  • adjective Of or relating to the Urdu language.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the official literary language of Pakistan, closely related to Hindi; widely used in India (mostly by Moslems); written in Arabic script

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Urdu urdū, short for zabān-i urdū : Persian zabān, language, tongue + Persian , of the + Persian urdū, camp, court (from Old Turkic ordu, residence, court).]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Persian اردو (ordu), from Turkic ordu ("army, camp") ( > Azeri ordu, Turkish ordu, Turkmen oorda). Compare horde.

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