Comments: ARABIC BARRIO.

This is quite surprising ... I had thought it was related to borough.

Posted by Araucaria at April 28, 2008 10:33 PM

The RAE suggests a further meaning of "wild" for the Arabic root, here: http://rae2.es/barrio . Steingass agrees with them: http://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/philologic/getobject.pl?c.0:1:9012.steingass --I wonder why the AHD doesn't mention this.

Posted by Aidan Kehoe at April 29, 2008 06:26 AM

"Dollar" also used to be common for referring to Chinese currency in English.

Posted by caffeind at April 30, 2008 03:47 AM

I think the unit of currency in Ehiopia probably stems from a similar word bur which is a grain of some sort.

Bur also means a state of contentment.

The word bar which you refer to meaning open space actually stems from the ward for land. Wild animals live on the land which is where bari stems from.

Posted by Omar Kooheji at May 2, 2008 07:10 AM