ਬਾਹਰ

What does bahar mean in Punjabi? Bahar (ਬਾਹਰ) means outside: beyond the walls of a house, out in the open air, and in much diaspora speech, overseas. As a noun it names the outside itself, the exterior, and its everyday opposite is andar, inside.

What does bahar mean in Punjabi?

Wiktionary's Punjabi entry, citing the Punjabi University Punjabi-English Dictionary and the Vaddi Panjabi Lughat, gives bahar, written ਬਾਹਰ in Gurmukhi and باہَر in Shahmukhi, as a masculine noun meaning outside and exterior, and as an adverb meaning outside, outdoors and overseas. Rekhta gives the same range: out, outside, in open, abroad and foreign, exterior and outward, and names it directly as the opposite of andar. Like its pair, it usually follows the place it describes: ghar de bahar, outside the house, pind de bahar, outside the village, desh de bahar, outside the country.

Where does bahar come from?

Bahar descends from Sanskrit bahir, the ancient word for outside, which Wiktionary gives as its source. Few Punjabi words have travelled so steadily: the same bahar steps out of doors in Punjabi, Urdu and Hindi alike, and in Punjabi it kept all three of its dictionary jobs, the outside of a thing, the outdoors beyond the walls, and the wider world overseas.

How is bahar used in everyday speech?

Bahar is the word of the courtyard, the lane and the fields. Bahar jana is to go out, bahar nikalna, which Rekhta records as to emerge or come out, is to step outside, and children are sent with the words bahar khedo, go and play outside. In the diaspora the word stretched further: bahar jana, said of a son or daughter, very often means going abroad, to Canada, England or Australia, and bahron, the from outside form in the word's own declension, can carry that overseas sense too. The dictionary's third adverb meaning, overseas, records exactly that journey.