Definitions

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

  • noun A group of vernacular Indic dialects spoken in northern India.
  • noun The literary and official language of northern India that is based on these dialects. It is written in Devanagari and uses Sanskrit as a resource language.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A modern dialect of northern India, differing from Hindustani in being a purer Aryan dialect. See Hindustani, Indian.
  • noun A native of India.

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

  • noun The name given by Europeans to that form of the Hindustani language which is chiefly spoken by native Hindus. In employs the Devanagari character, in which Sanskrit is written.

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

  • proper noun A language spoken in the Northern States of India. Also spoken in Fiji, Guyana and as a second language by Indians in many other countries. The word Hindi is borrowed from Persian into other languages.
  • adjective Of or relating to the Hindi language.

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

  • noun the most widely spoken of modern Indic vernaculars; spoken mostly in the north of India; along with English it is the official language of India; usually written in Devanagari script
  • adjective of or relating to or supporting Hinduism

Etymologies

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

[Hindi Hindī, from Hind, India, from Persian, from Old Persian Hinduš, Sind, from Sanskrit sindhuḥ, river.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Persian هندی (hendi), from هند (hend, "India"), from Sanskrit सिन्धु (sindhu) + Persian adjectival suffix ی-.

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