tamasha
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.88 in modern English
12
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
1
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A visual art form from Maharashtra, India, involving singing and dancing.
Countable; Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "c.1885, A.L.O.E. The Wondrous Sickle We had fine clothes, and feasting, and drum-beating, and fireworks let off in our village. It was a grand tamasha!"
- "I went to a Tamasha, as the Indian troops call these affairs, one fine Sunday afternoon in May. A broad plateau in the middle of the fields had been selected for the sports, and when I arrived an enormous crowd, as picturesque as any I have ever seen, was thronging round the ropes."
- "This superficial description is all the information the text has on the subject of the Muharram, and it is clear that to the author such activity was to be regarded as a tamasha, an outlandish ceremony of value to the foreign visitor only as a spectacle."
Etymology
Borrowed from Marathi तमाशा (tamāśā), from Classical Persian تماشا (tamāšā), ultimately from Arabic مَشَى (mašā, “to walk”).
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: तमाशा, تماشا, مَشَى