+pucka/pucca: Neel believed that the English meaning of this word came not from the Hind. 'ripe', as was often said, but rather the alternative denotation – 'cooked', or 'baked' – in which sense it was applied to 'baked' or 'burnt' bricks. 'A pucka sahib is thus the hardest and most brickish of his kind. Curiously the locution "kutcha sahib" is never used, the word griffin serving as its equivalent.'

puckrow / puckerow / pakrao (*The Glossary): 'It is easy to be misled into thinking that this is merely the Hind. for "hold" or "grasp" and was borrowed as such by the English soldier. But the word was quite commonly used also to mean "grapple". When used by pootlies and dashties in this sense its implications were by no means soldierly.'

+pultan/paltan: 'An interesting instance of a word which, after having been borrowed by Hind. (for its military application "platoon") is reabsorbed into English with the slightly altered sense of "multitude".'

+punch: 'Strange indeed that the beverage of this name has lost all memory of its parent: Hind. panj ("five"). In my time we scorned this mixture as an unpalatable economy.'

+pundit: Neel was not persuaded of the validity of the usual etymology of this word, whereby it is held to derive from a common Hind. term for 'learned man' or 'scholar'. 'A hint as to its true origin is to be seen in the eighteenth-century French spelling of it, pandect. Does this not clearly indicate that the word is a compound of "pan" + "edict" – meaning "one who pronounces on all matters"? Surely this is a closer approximation of its somewhat satirical English connotations than our respectful Hind. pundit?'

+punkah-wallah/-wala: 'The mystery of the fan.'

purwan (*Roebuck): Yard (spar from which sail is set); here Neel has underlined carefully his tutor's footnote: 'Purwan, I think, is compounded of Pur, a wing, or feather, and Wan, a ship, which last word is much used by the lascars from Durat (properly Soorut) etc., so that Purwan, the yards of the ship, might also be translated as the wings upon which the ship flies'.

+pyjama/pajama: 'There must surely be some significance to the fact that the Hind. for leg (pao) has received a much warmer welcome into the English language than the word for head (sir). While variants of pao figure in many compounds, including char+poy, tea+poy, and py+jama, sir has to its credit only turban (sirbandh) and seersucker (sirsukh).'

+quod/qaid: See chokey.

+rankin/rinkin (*The Barney-Book): 'A fine piece of English gypsy-slang, from our own rangin – colourful.'

+rawnee/rani: 'Although this Hind. word did indeed mean "queen", in English usage it had another connotation, for which see bayadère.'

+roti/rooty/rootie: 'It is my suspicion that the Oracle will absorb this as the Hind. roti, but it could just as well, as the Barneymen rightly observe, make its travels in the latter two forms, taken from the Bengali – these are, after all, the words that English soldiers commonly use in describing the bread that is served in their chownees.' It is no mystery that the English soldier does not trouble to distinguish between leavened and unleavened bread since the latter is a quantity unknown to his tongue: thus, what a rootie is to him would be to a sepoy a pao-roti. I am told that it is not merely the presence of yeast, but also of this prefix, pao, that prevents many sepoys from eating English bread: they believe that yeasted dough is kneaded with the feet (pao) and is therefore unclean. If only it were to be explained to them that the pao of pao-roti is merely a Hind. adaptation of pão, the Portuguese for bread! Imagine, if on some arduous march a starving soldier were to deny himself succour due to a grievous misconception: a simple word of explanation would spare him his cries of bachaw! bachaw! This, if anything, is a perfect illustration of why etymology is essential to man's survival.'

+ruffugar / ruffoogar / rafugar (*The Glossary): 'In philological circles a cautionary tale is told of a griffin who, having been set upon by a scruffy budmash, berated his assailant with the cry: "Unhand me, vile ruffoogar!" The speaker was mistaken in believing this to be Hind. for "ruffian", for a ruffoogar is merely a clothes-repairer.'

Rum-Johnny (*The Barney-Book): 'Taken from Hind. Ramjani, this word had a wholly different connotation in English, for which see bayadère.'

+rye/rai (*The Barney-Book): Neel was right in predicting that this common Hind. word for 'gentleman' would appear in the Oracle in its English-gypsy variant rye, rather than in the usual Indian form.

sabar (*Roebuck): topgallant or t'gallant; see dol.

+sahib: This word was a source of bafflement to Neel: 'How did it happen that the Arabic for "friend" became, in Hind. and English, a word meaning "master"?' The question was answered by a grandson who had visited the Soviet Union; on the margins of Neel's note he scribbled: '"Sahib" was to the Raj what "comrade" is to Communists – a mask for mastery.' See also Beebee.

+salwar/shalwar/shulwaur: See kameez.

+sammy (*The Barney-Book): 'The anglice of Hind. swami, from which sammy-house to mean "mandir": whether this is preferable to "pagoda" is a matter of debate.'

sammy-house: See above.

sawai (*Roebuck): staysail; see dol.

+seacunny/seaconny: On this word, meaning 'helmsman', Neel penned a note that covers the verso of the four of hearts: 'It is not uncommon to hear it said that the term seacunny/seaconny is derived from an old English word meaning "rabbit" – to wit: "cony" or "coney" (sea-cunny thus being interpreted to mean "sea-rabbit"). Beware anyone who tells you this, for he is having a quiet laugh at your expense: he probably knows full well that "coney" has a secret, but far more common, use (as when a London buy-em-dear says to a prospective customer, "No money, no coney"). This is why the more pucka ma'amsahibs will not allow the word seacunny to pass their lips, preferring to use the absurd expression sea-bunny. ("Well then, madam," I was once tempted to say, "if we are thus to describe a helmsman, should we not also speak of the Great Sea-bunny in the Sky?") If only one could find the words to explain to these ladies that no rabbit need fear the conning of seacunnies: the term is utterly harmless and derives merely from the Arabic sukkán, meaning "rudder", from which we get sukkáni and thus seacunny.' See also lascar.

+seersucker: Neel objected vehemently to the notion that the name of this cotton material was derived (as the Oracle was later to contend) from the Persian shir-o-shakkar, or 'milk and sugar'. 'By what stretch of the imagination could anyone imagine that a sweet, milky syrup would be pleasant to wear on the skin?' Instead, following Sir Henry, he derived the word from sir-sukh, 'joy of/to the head', on the analogy of turban (which he thought to be derived from Hind. sir-bandh – 'head-band'). He took the view that the terms were aptly paired since the latter was sometimes made of the former. As supplemental evidence he cited a maxim which he claimed to be common among lascars: sirbandh me sirsukh- 'a turban is happiness for the head'.

+sepoy/seapoy: 'The variant spelling, sea-poy, has caused much confusion over the ages (see charpoy). One ill-informed wordy-pundit has even espoused the theory that this term is a mispronunciation of "sea-boy" and was thus originally a synonym for lascar. This is, of course, an elementary misunderstanding and could be easily corrected if the English spelling of sepoy were to be altered to sepohy. This would have the dual advantage of advertising this word's descent from the Persian/Turkish sipáhi, while also making evident its kinship to the French spahi, which refers similarly to a certain kind of colonial mercenary.'