Word.ws English Dictionary

raiyat

Syllables: rai·yatUK/ˈɹaɪət/

raiyat noun: a peasant or agricultural labourer in South Asia.

Noun

raiyat (plural raiyats or raiyat)

  1. A peasant or agricultural labourer in South Asia.
    • In Ireland Paddy makes riots, in Bengal raiyats make paddy; and in this lies the difference between the paddy of green Bengal and Paddy of the Emerald Isle.1874, Lál Behári Day, Govinda Sámanta, or the history of a Bengal Ráiyat
    • They are simply the rank-and-file—the food for fever—sharing with the ryot and the plough-bullock the honor of being the plinth on which the State rests.1909, Rudyard Kipling, “The Education of Otis Yeere. Part II.”, in Under the Deodars (The Works of Rudyard Kipling), Edinburgh de Luxe edition, Boston, Mass.; London: The Edinburgh Society, →OCLC...

Forms of raiyat

pluralraiyats
pluralraiyat
alternative formraiat
alternative formryot

Origin of raiyat

Borrowed from Urdu رَعِیَّت (ra'iyat, “peasant”), from Classical Persian رعیت (ra'iyyat, “peasants; population”), from Arabic رَعِيَّة (raʕiyya, “flock, herd”).

Questions about raiyat

What does raiyat mean?
Raiyat means a peasant or agricultural labourer in South Asia.
What part of speech is raiyat?
Raiyat is a noun.
How do you pronounce raiyat?
Raiyat is pronounced /ˈɹaɪət/ (UK).
What is the plural of raiyat?
The plural of raiyat is raiyats.

Words near raiyat in the dictionary

  1. raithas
  2. Raithby
  3. Raithby by Spilsby
  4. Raithby cum Maltby
  5. raither
  6. raiyat
  7. raiyats
  8. raiyatwari
  9. raiyot
  10. raiyots
  11. Raizal

Source and license

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