Word.ws English Dictionary

howadji

howadji noun: a traveller or merchant from the Middle East.

Noun

howadji (plural howadjis)

  1. (archaic) A traveller or merchant from the Middle East
    • "O fisherman, have you any fish?" And he held up a string of them and made answer: "O Howadji, I have."1854, Bayard Taylor, A Journey to Central Africa; or, Life and Landscapes...

Forms of howadji

pluralhowadjis
alternative formhowaji
alternative formhowajji

Origin of howadji

From Arabic خَوَاجَا (ḵawājā, “gentleman”), from Classical Persian خواجه (xwāja, “gentleman”). The term came to be applied to merchants because they were formerly the chief travellers. Doublet of hodja.

Questions about howadji

What does howadji mean?
Howadji means a traveller or merchant from the Middle East.
What part of speech is howadji?
Howadji is a noun.
What is the plural of howadji?
The plural of howadji is howadjis.

Words near howadji in the dictionary

  1. how-do-you-dos
  2. how-to
  3. how-to-vote card
  4. how-to-vote cards
  5. how-tos
  6. howadji
  7. howadjis
  8. howaji
  9. howajis
  10. howajji
  11. howajjis

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: howadji (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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Cite this entry: “howadji.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/howadji. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.