Tandoor
/tænˈdʊər/noun
A cylindrical clay or metal oven used especially in South Asian cooking.
Did you know?The word’s ancestry reaches back to ancient Near Eastern oven terms, showing how a cooking technology—and its name—traveled across empires and languages.
Etymological Timeline
2nd Millennium BCE
Akkadian
tinūru
“An oven or furnace; often cited as an early recorded relative of the later Near Eastern forms.”
Ancient Aramaic
Aramaic
tannūrā
“An oven, especially a clay oven.”
Classical Arabic
Arabic
tannūr
“A traditional oven, commonly a cylindrical clay oven.”
Medieval Persian
Persian
tanūr
“An oven or baking furnace.”
Medieval Hindi and Urdu
Hindi/Urdu
tandūr
“A clay oven, particularly one used for baking breads and roasting foods.”
20th Century
English
tandoor
“A South Asian oven, adopted into English through contact with Indian languages.”