Talk:ग़रीब

@AryamanA I haven't seen ग़रीब (ġarīb) been used in the adjectival and noun senses of "foreign, strange, wonderful, unusual"/"foreigner, stranger, alien". Poor and similar senses are the only ones where I have seen it being used, McGregor doesn't even list the foreign etc. senses of the word; Dasa lists the foreign sense as rare "३. विदेशी । परदेशी (को॰) ।" (with को॰ here meaning "अन्य कोश" which from what I have seen the dictionary uses to indicate uncommon/rare meanings).

Seeing this I think the foreign and other related senses should be put under rare or be removed. (PS: The original Arabic sense seems to have been lost in Hindi except maybe in the phrase अजीब ओ ग़रीब). Gotitbro (talk) 07:08, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

@Gotitbro: Exactly, the existence of अजीब-ओ-ग़रीब (ajīb-o-ġarīb) means that it did, at least at some time, mean "strange, foreign". I'll stick an obsolete tag next to it rather than remove it entirely. —Aryaman^{A (मुझसे बात करें • योगदान)} 14:17, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

@AryamanA: It would be interesting to know how the sense developed from strange to poor. Another word with an interesting development is दीवाना (dīvānā), from advisor to lover to mad. Gotitbro (talk) 15:34, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

@AryamanA: One explanation I found of how the word acquired its meaning from stranger > poor:

ajiib means "strange", "wonderful" etc. Ghariib has come to mean "poor" but in its original sense it meant "foreign" (as in "stranger/ajnabii"), strange, alien. Imagine you are a stranger to a land (Ghariib), with no friends, property etc. So, in time "Ghariib" acquired the meaning of a person who is poor.

Does seem convincing. What do you think? Gotitbro (talk) 21:13, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

@Gotitbro: Hmm, seems to make sense to me. According to Steingass Persian has the secondary definition "poor" too. The shift would have had to happen in Persian in that case. —Aryaman^{A (मुझसे बात करें • योगदान)} 23:39, 25 September 2019 (UTC)