Platts, A Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi and English (DSAL)

What it actually is

John Platts's 1884 dictionary, digitised by the Digital South Asia Library, remains the reference work for Urdu etymology and for reading anything written before about 1950. It marks Persian, Arabic and Sanskrit origins, which is how you start predicting a word's register rather than memorising it. Wrong tool for modern conversational vocabulary — use Rekhta for that.

What it covers

• Reading
• Vocabulary

Listed for

• Urdu

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