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Origin and history of pariah

pariah(n.)

1610s, "member of a low caste in southern India, shunned as unclean," from Portuguese paria or directly from Tamil (Dravidian) paraiyar, plural of paraiyan "drummer" (at festivals, the hereditary duty of members of the largest of the lower castes of southern India), from parai "large festival drum." "Especially numerous at Madras, where its members supplied most of the domestics in European service" [OED]. Applied by Hindus and Europeans to any members of low Hindu castes and even to outcastes. Extended meaning "social outcast" is attested by 1819.

also from 1610s

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Trends of pariah

adapted from books.google.com/ngrams/ with a 7-year moving average; ngrams are probably unreliable.

More to explore

outcast
mid-14c., "an exile, a pariah, a person cast out or rejected," literally "that which is cast out," noun use of past participle of Middle English outcasten "to throw out or expel, reject," from out (adv.) + casten "to cast" (see cast (v.)). The adjective is attested from late 14c.
castaway
late 15c., "one who is rejected," from the verbal phrase "to reject, dismiss" (c. 1300, literal and figurative), from cast (v.) + away (adv.). Often in a spiritual sense at first; Johnson's dictionary in 1799 gives "A person lost, or abandoned, by Providence" as the only definiti
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Ishmael
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leper
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repel
early 15c., "to drive away, remove, quench" (a sense now obsolete), from Old French repeller and directly from Latin repellere "to drive back," from re- "back" (see re-) + pellere "to drive, strike" (from PIE root *pel- (5) "to thrust, strike, drive"). The sense of "encounter (an
untouchable
1560s, "immaterial," from un- (1) "not" + touchable (see touch (v.)). Meaning "that legally cannot be interfered with" is recorded from 1734. Meaning "too loathsome or defiling to be touched" is recorded from 1873. The noun, in reference to a hereditary low caste of India, is att
higgledy-piggledy
"confusedly, hurriedly," 1590s, a "vocal gesture" [OED] probably formed from pig and the animal's suggestions of mess and disorder. Reduplications in the h-/p- pattern are common (as in hanky-panky, hocus-pocus, hinch(y)-pinch(y), an obsolete children's game, attested from c. 160
cantankerous
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twitterpated
1942, apparently first attested in the Walt Disney movie "Bambi" (there also was a song by that name but it was not in the studio release of the film), a past-participle adjective formed from twitter in the "tremulous excitement" noun sense (1670s) + pate (n.2) "head" (compare fl

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Dictionary entries near pariah
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