Bungalow came into English in the 1670s from Anglo-Indian usage, from Gujarati bangalo and Hindi bangla, meaning a low, thatched house. Literally it means "Bengalese" — a house in the Bengal style — used elliptically until the adjective became the name of the thing itself.
That is a common way for place-derived words to enter English, and the whole Anglo-Indian layer of the vocabulary arrived by the same route: shampoo, jungle, pyjamas, veranda, loot, thug and guru all came home with the British in India. What is striking about bungalow is how completely it lost its geography. A word that once meant "a Bengali house" now names a suburban building type in Britain, America and Australia, with nothing left of Bengal in it but the sound.
bungalow (n.) 1670s, Anglo-Indian, "one-story thatched house," usually surrounded by a veranda, from Gujarati bangalo , from Hindi bangla "low, thatched house," literally "Bengalese," used elliptically for "house in the Bengal style" (see Bengal ). Related: Bungaloid . also from 1670s
bungalow came in through Later and wider borrowings, and its spelling follows that family's conventions.
What gives it away on the page
| everyday domestic words from India | Sanskrit-descended languages, via the Raj.shampoo, bungalow, jungle, pyjamas, loot, thug, guru |
Later and wider borrowings in the spelling guide · guess another word's family