swadeshi
/swəˈdɛʃi/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.99 in modern English
15
Scrabble Score
8
Letters
3
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A policy of nationalist self-sufficiency in India, involving the revival and promotion of domestic production and (originally) the boycott of British products.
Indian usage; Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "The Swadeshi movement in India is one which in certain of its aspects can be regarded with much sympathy. A spirit of patriotism is excellent, and the endeavour to engender and foster it, provided it is made along legitimate lines, calls for encouragement and not condemnation."
- "The Swadeshi movement, in its bad sense—the boycotting of foreign goods—has had no effect on imports as a whole, and even the articles specifically aimed at, cotton goods and sugar, have entered to an unparalleled extent in the last three years. The good side of the Swadeshi movement, the development of indigenous industries, is seen in the increased imports of textile machinery and metals."
- "The cry of the Indian "Insurgent" to-day is "Shiksha," (education,) education in all its phases and branches, both extensive and intensive; "Swadeshi," (home industries) and "Swaraj" (self-government)."
- "And yet long before this popular ebullition of excitement, I myself had given a thousand rupees, when I had not five rupees to call my own, to open a Swadeshi store and courted banter and bankruptcy."
- "My work should be, and therefore is, to organise the production of handspun cloth, and to find means for the disposal of the Khadi thus produced. [...] I swear by this form of Swadeshi, because through it I can provide work to the semi-starved, semi-employed women of India."
- "The anti-partition agitation with its vehement invective, its appeals to Hindu sentiment, its cry that Bengal as motherland, once rich and famous, had been torn in two despite the protests of her children, its proposals for enforcing a punitive boycott of foreign goods and supplanting them entirely by "swadeshi" indigenous products, its enlistment of students and school-boys in picketing operations, gave ample cover for the sedulous teaching of revolutionary doctrines."
Etymology
PIE word *swé Borrowed from Hindi स्वदेशी (svadeśī, “nationalist, patriotic; policy of nationalist self-sufficiency, swadeshi; proponent of the swadeshi movement”), from स्वदेश (svadeś, “one’s own country”) + -ई (-ī, suffix forming adjectives, or forming nouns meaning a person who does an action indicated by the stem). स्वदेश is derived from Sanskrit स्वदेश (svadeśa), from स्व (sva, “his or her own”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *swé (“(pronoun) self”)) + देश (deśa, “country; point, place”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *deyḱ- (“to point out”)).
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: *deyḱ-, स्वदेशी, स्वदेश, *swé
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /swəˈdɛʃi/
- British English: /swəˈdɛʃi/