10 Persian Words that Come from Parts of the Body

Updated: 8 July 2019

I have a relative who’s a pretty professional mountaineer. On almost every visit to my dad’s village, we go on an early morning hike– somewhere I can easily manage with my simple jogging shoes and stick that I find en route to serve as a makeshift trekking pole. Along the way, he tells me about peaks he’s conquered, the latest places he’s explored on foot, and asks what I’m writing about on my blog these days, intermittently reminding me to keep my steps and my breath in sync. “I have a topic you may be interested in writing about,” he told me on one hike while he calmly zigzagged his way up the hill. “About words that come from parts of the body. And the cool thing is, they are mostly related to nature.” Given my love of etymology, I was intrigued to find out how anatomy figured into these words. And as he started listing them, I could feel my face light up. They were all words that I was so accustomed to that I had never drawn the connection (and figured maybe I wasn’t the only one 🙂 ). And I haven’t looked at them the same ever since. So here they are- 10 Persian words that come from parts of the body.

A great thing about these words is that there is nothing extra to memorize. All you have to do is add an “-eh” (or -ه) to the body part. You’ll notice that the pairs either bear a physical resemblance to each other or else it sort of seems logical.

Cheshm (eye) – cheshmeh (spring, source)

Damâgh (nose) – damâgheh (cape, point, headland)

The Cape of Good Hope in South Africa is called damâgheh omid-e nik (دماغه امید نیک ) in Persian.

Lab (lip) – labeh (edge, fringe, hem)

Dahan (mouth) – dahaneh (opening)

Goosh (ear) – goosheh (corner, angle)

Gardan (neck) – gardaneh (pass/mountain pass)

Related to gardaneh, we have the term dozd-e sar-e gardaneh (دزد سر گردنه) which is just like the English “highway robbery”, only the Persian refers to the person (highway robber), not the action (highway robbery).

Pâ (leg/foot) – pâyeh (pillar, foundation, basis)

Incidentally, pâyeh is a slang word meaning that you are down to do something. As in:

پایه هستی بریم شمال این هفته؟

Pâyeh hasti berim shomâl in hafte? (Are you down to take a trip to the north this week?)

Dast (hand/arm) – dasteh (handle, bunch, bouquet)

Dasteh can be a handle (as in an ax handle- dasteh tabar– دسته تبر), a bunch (as in ye dasteh esfenâj tâzeh– a bunch of fresh spinach- یک دسته اسفناج تازه), or a bouquet of flowers (ye dasteh gol– یک دسته گل).

Mu (hair) – muyeh (weeping, mourning)

Specifically, muyeh (or the verb muyeh kardan) is a kind of weeping that refers to women who are in mourning and the great sadness that causes them to tug at their hair.

Rish (beard) – risheh (root, basis)

Pronunciation tip: Persian has a pretty regular stress pattern, namely that you stress the last syllable. And you know that the verb است (ast– is) is always reduced to sound like “-eh” in spoken Persian and written with a -ه at the end of a word in informal writing. So to differentiate between the two in speaking, i.e. to show the difference between saying “It’s an eye” or “Spring”, you would need to stress the right syllable, as in the following:

CHESH-meh (It’s an eye.) vs chesh-MEH (spring/source)

GOO-sheh (It’s an ear.) vs goo-SHEH (corner)

gar-DA-neh (It’s a neck.) vs gar-da-NEH (mountain pass)

Etc…

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