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Glancing across a few web hits on the word pariah I see that:
- a mother who didn’t put out chocolate Easter eggs was treated as a pariah by her family
- Iceland risks being treated as a pariah among nations if it doesn’t figure out how to pay off its debts
So a pariah is someone or something we are not very happy with.
In English we have been calling such unlucky or antisocial entities pariahs for about 200 years.
But why? The word traces back to the name of a specific kind of drum used in festivals in southern India. What’s so bad about that?
The answer lies in the old Indian caste system.
The Pariahs were a specific caste whose hereditary job it was to act as the drummer in those festivals.
But that didn’t convey much honor on them.
As a travel writer of 400 years ago Samuel Purchas put it:
“The Pareas are of worse esteeme,..reputed worse than the Diuell.”
These were one the caste known as untouchables.
It was the British time spent in India that brought the word into English and then, within English the meaning was generalized from a specific clan of unfortunate Indian to any generally hated person or entity.
I suppose Iceland or that chocolateless mom could have been called something worse; for example whatever the ancient Indian words were for shoemakers or janitors.
According to Hobson-Jobson—which is a dictionary of 1886 with a focus on words that have come to English from India:
“There are several castes in the Tamil country considered to be lower than the Pariahs, e.g. the caste of shoemakers, and the lowest caste of washermen.”
And since no one likes being low man on the totem pole, again according to Hobson-Jobson:
“the Pariah deals out the same disparaging treatment to these that he himself receives from higher castes.”
Five days a week Charles Hodgson produces Podictionary – the podcast for word lovers, Thursday episodes here at OUPblog. He’s also the author of several books including his latest History of Wine Words – An Intoxicating Dictionary of Etymology from the Vineyard, Glass, and Bottle.
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