Diwali, the Hindu, Sikh, and Jain festival of lights, from the Sanskrit word dipavali (a row of lights), starts next Wednesday. A good opportunity to look at one of many words we have borrowed from Hindi: dinghy. A dingi was a small rowboat used on rivers in India. We originally spelled it “dingy” but then needed to distinguish it from the adjective, and to show that the “g” is hard, we added the “h”.
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