purdah

1. 1.

   a state of social isolation

   Synonymssolitude

   Broaderisolation
2. 2.

   the traditional Hindu or Muslim system of keeping women secluded

   Synonymssex segregation

   Broadersegregation
3. 3.

   a screen used in India to separate women from men or strangers

   Broaderscreen

Other forms of purdah

plural

purdahs·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about purdah

What does purdah mean?

purdah means "a state of social isolation". That is the primary sense; the word has 3 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in purdah?

purdah has 2 syllables: pur-dah. The stress falls on "pur".

What is another word for purdah?

Close synonyms include solitude, sex segregation. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is purdah a common word?

purdah is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.