Etymology

Elu

E1L1U1

Today it means: the ancestral form of Sinhalese, the Sinhala language, a Middle Indo-Aryan Prakrit of the 3rd century BCE. Full definition →

Sinhalese එළු ← Prakrit 𑀲𑀻𑀳𑀮 ← Sanskrit सिंहल
Ask AI about its historyChatGPTClaudePerplexityGoogle AIGrok

The story

  1. Sanskrit · derived fromसिंहल
  2. Prakrit · derived from𑀲𑀻𑀳𑀮
  3. Sinhalese · borrowed fromඑළු
  4. English todayElu

Borrowed from Sinhalese එළු (eḷu), හෙළු (heḷu), from Prakrit 𑀲𑀻𑀳𑀮 (sīhala) (compare Pali sīhala), from Sanskrit सिंहल (siṃhala, literally “lionlike”), from सिंह (siṃha, “lion”) + -ल (-la). Doublet of Ceylon and Sinhala.

Words from the same roots

Sanskritसिंहल all →

CeylonSinhalasinhalite

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.