Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, and of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical and Discursive c6.49

c6.49

*Veranda* has been confidently derived by some etymologists (among others by M. Defréméry, a distinguished scholar) from the Pers. *barāmada*, ‘a projection,’ a balcony; an etymology which is indeed hardly a possible one, but has been treated by Mr. Beames (who was evidently unacquainted with the facts that do make it hardly possible) with inappropriate derison, he giving as the unquestionable original a Sanskrit word *baraṇḍa*, ‘a portico.’ On this Burnell has observed that the word does not belong to the older Sanskrit, but is only found in comparatively modern works. Be that as it may, it need not be doubted that the word *veranda*, as used in England and France, was imported from India, *i.e.* from the usage of Europeans in India; but it is still more certain that either in the same sense, or in one closely allied, the word existed, quite independent of either Sanskrit or Persian, in Portuguese and Spanish, and the manner in which it occurs in the very earliest narrative of the Portuguese adventure to India (*Roteiro do Viagem de Vasco da Gama*, written by one of the expedition of 1497), confirmed by the Hispano-Arabic vocabulary of Pedro de Alcalà, printed in 1505, preclude the possibility of its having been adopted by the Portuguese from intercourse with India.