Etymon #10
Once for body
Borrowed from Hindi, the word entered English in 1762, in a published memoir of a voyage to the East Indies by a British naval officer. Its original sense was nothing to do with what the word now describes: it named an act done to the body.
The first English appearance was in 1762, in a memoir of a voyage by Charles Frederick Noble, a British naval officer who had sailed for the East India Company through Java and on to Canton. The Hindi verb he transcribed travelled with him from port to port, written down in several different spellings as it crossed from speech into print. The form we now use settled in the nineteenth century, when the practice the word named had already begun to shift.
The earliest meaning was a kind of massage. The Hindi verb described the act of kneading and pressing the muscles with the hands, a practice long used in India to relieve fatigue and restore the body. To receive one in 1762 was to be given a thorough working-over of the limbs and back.
The same period of British presence in India brought English a wide family of Hindi words. PYJAMAS and CHUTNEY are two of them. So is this word.
