banyan

Wikispecies

• banian, bannian

From Portuguese baniano, from Arabic بَنِيَان (baniyān), from Gujarati વાણિયો (vāṇiyo, “merchant”), from Sanskrit वाणिज (vāṇijá), from earlier वणिज् (vaṇíj, “merchant, trader”). The name appears to have been first bestowed popularly on a famous tree of this species growing near Bandar Abbas, under which the Bannians, or Hindu traders settled at that port, had built a little pagoda.^[1] Doublet of bunnia.

• (UK, US) IPA^(key): /ˈbæn.jæn/, /ˈbæn.jən/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ænjən
• Hyphenation: ban‧yan

banyan (plural banyans)

1. An Indian trader, merchant, cashier, or money changer.
2. A tropical Indian fig tree, Ficus benghalensis, that has many aerial roots.
   • 1914, Teresa Frances, William Rose Benét, The East I Know, translation of original by Paul Claudel, page 33:

     We climb and then descend; we pass by the great banyan which, like Atlas, settling himself powerfully on his contorted haunches, seems awaiting with knee and shoulder the burden of the sky.

3. Various other trees of the Ficus subgenus Urostigma, especially Ficus pertusa (Central American banyan) and Ficus microcarpa (Chinese banyan or Malayan banyan).
4. A type of loose gown worn in India.
5. (India, Pakistan) A vest; an undershirt; a singlet.
   • 1889, Rudyard Kipling, “At the Pit's Mouth”, in Under the Deodars, Boston: The Greenock Press, published 1899, page 50:

     It was an honest letter, written by an honest man, then stewing in the Plains on two hundred rupees a month (for he allowed his wife eight hundred and fifty), and in a silk banian and cotton trousers.

6. (British, naval slang, dated) A camping excursion on shore, to give a ship's crew a break from shipboard routine.

• (tropical Indian fig tree): banyan tree

• Banyan on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Banyan in the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th edition, 1911)