Word.ws English Dictionary

Balbodh

Balbodh proper noun: a variant of the Devanagari script adopted to write the Marathi, Konkani, Varhadi, Khandeshi and Korku languages in around the states of Maharashtra and Goa in India.

balbodh: a variant of the Devanagari script adopted to write the Marathi, Konkani, Varhadi, Khandeshi and...
Image: Symphonicallyu, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Proper noun

Balbodh

  1. A variant of the Devanagari script adopted to write the Marathi, Konkani, Varhadi, Khandeshi and Korku languages in around the states of Maharashtra and Goa in India.
    • Typically for the colonial situation, the decision to fix scripts for Gujarati and Marathi was the result of an official decree in 1826. No doubt, reasons of official convenience and economy had been the paramount consideration. The order declared that, from then on, balbodh or the dev[a]nagari...2002, “4. Colonial Power, Print and the Re-Making of the Literate Sphere: Western India Under Colonialism”, in Veena Naregal, editor, Language, Politics, Elites and the Public Sphere Western India...
    • The script used to write Marathi is known as Balbodh, which is similar to Devanagari, but has an extra letter to accommodate Marathi sounds. In the past, besides Balbodh, Marathi was also written in the Modi script. From around the thirteenth century till the middle of the twentieth century, while...2024, “Marathi: Bridging the North-South Divide”, in Karthik Venkatesh, editor, 10 Indian Languages and How They Came to Be, Penguin Random House India Private Limited, →ISBN, page 95

Balbodh meaning in Hindi and Gujarati

Balbodh in Hindi

variant of the Devanagari script
बालबोध bālbodh

Balbodh in Gujarati

variant of the Devanagari script
બાળબોધ bāḷbodh

Examples of Balbodh in a sentence

  • The order declared that, from then on, balbodh or the dev[a]nagari would be the standard script used for Marathi print.2002, “4. Colonial Power, Print and the Re-Making of the Literate Sphere: Western India Under Colonialism”, in Veena Naregal, editor...
  • The script used to write Marathi is known as Balbodh, which is similar to Devanagari, but has an extra letter to accommodate Marathi sounds.2024, “Marathi: Bridging the North-South Divide”, in Karthik Venkatesh, editor, 10 Indian Languages and How They Came to Be, Penguin Random...

Origin of Balbodh

Borrowed from Marathi बाळबोध (bāḷbodh, “understood by children”).

Questions about Balbodh

What does Balbodh mean?
Balbodh means a variant of the Devanagari script adopted to write the Marathi, Konkani, Varhadi, Khandeshi and Korku languages in around the states of Maharashtra and Goa in India.
What is Balbodh in Hindi?
Balbodh in Hindi is बालबोध (bālbodh). See Balbodh meaning in Hindi.
How do you use Balbodh in a sentence?
The order declared that, from then on, balbodh or the dev[a]nagari would be the standard script used for Marathi print.
What part of speech is Balbodh?
Balbodh is a proper noun.

Words near Balbodh in the dictionary

  1. balbises
  2. Balbo's game
  3. balboa
  4. Balboa Heights
  5. balboas
  6. Balbodh
  7. Balboni
  8. Balbonis
  9. balbriggan
  10. balbriggans
  11. balbucinate

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Balbodh (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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