Word.ws English Dictionary

Pathan

/pəˈtɑːn/

Pathan noun: synonym of Pashtun; a member of the Pashto-speaking people of today’s north-west Pakistan and south-east Afghanistan.

Noun

Pathan (plural Pathans)

  1. (British, India, South-Asia) Synonym of Pashtun; a member of the Pashto-speaking people of today’s north-west Pakistan and south-east Afghanistan.
    • After long deliberation about the choice of nations, I became a “Pathán.”1855, Sir Richard Burton, Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Meccah, Dover, published 1964, pages 44–5
    • The 57-mile line from Jesselton to Beaufort was a more substantial undertaking than that from Weston, and a contract was given to the firm of George Pauling & Company, which brought many Pathans, veterans of railway building in India, to tackle the job.1958 November, M. H. Baker, “The North Borneo Railway”, in Railway Magazine, page 783
    Synonyms:
    Pashtun

Synonyms of Pathan

Forms of Pathan

pluralPathans

Origin of Pathan

Borrowed from Hindustani پٹھان / पठान (paṭhān). Doublet of Pashtun.

Words that rhyme with Pathan

34 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about Pathan

What does Pathan mean?
Pathan means synonym of Pashtun; a member of the Pashto-speaking people of today’s north-west Pakistan and south-east Afghanistan.
What part of speech is Pathan?
Pathan is a noun.
How do you pronounce Pathan?
Pathan is pronounced /pəˈtɑːn/.
What is the plural of Pathan?
The plural of Pathan is Pathans.

Words near Pathan in the dictionary

  1. path traversals
  2. path-
  3. path-connected
  4. Pathak
  5. Pathaks
  6. Pathan
  7. Pathanamthitta
  8. Pathankot
  9. Pathans
  10. pathbreaker
  11. pathbreakers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Pathan (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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “Pathan.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pathan. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.