Borrowed fromHindustaniہِنْدُوسْتانی(hindūstānī) /हिंदुस्तानी(hindustānī), fromClassical Persianهِنْدُوسْتَانِی(hindūstānī), fromهِنْدُو(hindū,“Hindu, Indian”) +ـسْتَان(-stān,“land”) + adjective suffixـِی(-ī). Equivalent toHindustan +-i.
Hindustani (comparativemoreHindustani,superlativemostHindustani)
- (dated outside of South Asia) Related toIndia, varying historically from the entire Indiansubcontinent to India north of theDeccan, especially the plains of theGanges andJumna.
- (dated) Any thing related to Mughal Empire.
- (music) of or pertaining toHindustani music.
related to India, or historically the entire Indian subcontinent
Hindustani (pluralHindustanis)
- Aperson from India, varying historically from the entiresubcontinent to India north of theDeccan, especially the plains of the Ganges and Jumna.
person from India or the Indian subcontinent
Hindustani
- The pluricentric language ofHindi-Urdu, of whichHindi andUrdu areliterarystandards;[1] the language from whichHindi andUrdu are derived.[2]
1792, Sir William Jones,Dissertations and Miscellaneous Pieces Relating to the History and Antiquities, the Arts, Sciences, and Literature, of Asia, page150:Swerg, in theHinduſtànì language, means Heaven.
1900 December –1901 October,Rudyard Kipling, chapter XI, inKim, London:Macmillan and Co., published1901,→OCLC:Kim watched the stars as they rose one after another in the still, sticky dark, till he fell asleep at the foot of the altar. That night he dreamed inHindustani, with never an English word…
- TheDelhi dialect of that language.
- (historical) Thelanguage which is now known asUrdu.
1895, Harlan Page Beach,The Cross in the Land of the Trident, page59:Hindustani, or Urdu (i.e., camp language), is a dialect of Hindi, differing from it in its large admixture of Persian words, and in that it is usually printed in Persian or Arabic characters, while Hindi is commonly printed in Sanskrit letters.
- (historical) Thelanguage which is now known asHindi.[3]
1873,Haris Chandra's magazine, page119, column 1:Of the several languages derived from the Sanskrit, none exercises so general and wide-spread an influence over India as the Hindi, or Sir George'sCommonHindustani.
1880,The Pall Mall Budget: Being a Weekly Collection of Articles Printed in the Pall Mall Gazette from Day to Day, with a Summary of News, page977, column 2:But Mr. Lyall, in an article that is all too short, shows thatHindustani, or Hindi (for there is no essential difference between the two) possesses a continuous body of literature which represents intellectual life in Northern India during the past six centuries.
- ^Basu, Manisha (2017),The Rhetoric of Hindutva,Cambridge University Press,→ISBN: “Urdu, like Hindi, was a standardized register of the Hindustani language deriving from the Dehlavi dialect and emerged in the eighteenth century under the rule of the late Mughals.”
- ^“Hindustani”, inOxford English Dictionary[1], Oxford University Press,2024: “An Indo-Aryan language of northern South Asia widely used as a lingua franca, from which modern Hindi and Urdu derive.”
- ^Chand, Tara (1944), “Some Misconceptions About Hindustani”, inThe Problem of Hindustani[2], Indian Periodicals Ltd.: “The name Hindustani has been used for Khari Boli. It has also been used as a synonym for Urdu by many writers, and for Modern Hindi by some.”
