The part of a Muslim household reserved for women, or the women themselves; also called a harem.
From Arabic ḥarīm, meaning 'sacred' or 'forbidden,' derived from ḥarama meaning 'to forbid.' The word entered English through Ottoman Turkish and Persian usage, referring to the female section of a household that was off-limits to male visitors.
This Arabic word reveals how language preserves cultural concepts—when a room or group of people becomes so important to a society that it gets its own word, that word often travels across languages and centuries.
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