Pakistani

How to spell pakistani

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce pakistani

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does pakistani mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to Pakistan, its people, or its culture.
2. nounA person from Pakistan or a citizen of Pakistan.

Pakistani in a sentence

• adjective

  The restaurant serves authentic pakistani cuisine.

• noun

  Every pakistani in the delegation spoke fluent Urdu.

• adjective

  She holds both British and pakistani citizenship.

• noun

  The visa form asked whether the applicant was a pakistani.

Where does pakistani come from?

Language of origin: Other

This word is built on the country name Pakistan, which was coined in 1933 by the activist Choudhry Rahmat Ali, who proposed it for the Muslim regions of British India. The name works on two levels at once: it reads as an acronym drawn from Punjab, Afghania, Kashmir, Sindh, and Baluchistan, and it also means 'land of the pure', from the Persian and Urdu word pak meaning 'pure' joined to the suffix -stan meaning 'land' or 'place'. The adjective pakistani adds the suffix -i, a Persian and Urdu ending that turns a place name into a word for a person from there or a thing belonging to there, exactly as in Iraqi or Israeli. English adopted the term in the 1940s as the new state took shape, reaching independence in 1947. For spelling, the key points are the single k, the s in the middle, and the -tani ending, since the unstressed vowels can tempt writers to second-guess the order of letters.

How the word is built

• Pakistan (the country name)
• -i (suffix marking nationality or origin, from Persian/Urdu)