Curry’ is not an Indian word. If that seems surprising, so will this: no language in India (and there are at least 22) uses the term ‘curry’.
The origins of the word are complicated, going far back—even beyond India’s colonial history, a period of nearly 200 years during which the vast country was occupied by its British colonisers. It is conjectured amongst etymologists that ‘curry’ first emerged in the 17th century as an anglicised version of the Tamil term . may sound like curry, but unlike the broader catch-all term, the former refers to a specific sort of sauce that uses the leaves of the curry tree as an ingredient.
