peechil (*Roebuck): See agil.
+penang-lawyer: See lathi.
phaltu-tanni: See turnee.
+pijjin/pidgin: 'Numerous indeed are the speculations on the origins of this much-used expression, for people are loathe to accept that it is merely a way of pronouncing that commonest of English words: "business". But such indeed is the case, which is why a novice or griffin is commonly spoken of as a learn- or larn-pijjin. I have recently been informed of another interesting compound, stool-pijjin, which is used, I believe, to describe the business of answering Nature's call.'
poggle/porgly/poggly (*The Glossary, *The Barney-Book): On this word Neel quotes with disapproval Barrère & Leland's borrowing of Sir Henry's observations: 'A madman, an idiot, a dolt. [From] Hindu págal… A friend used… to adduce a macaronic adage which we fear the non-Indian will fail to appreciate: "Pogal et pecunia jaldi separantur", i.e., a fool and his money are soon parted.' To this Neel adds: 'If such were indeed the case then none would be more deserving of pauperdom than these pundits, for a poggle may be out of his mind, but he is no fool.'
+pollock-saug / palong-shák (*The Glossary): 'Sir Henry has never been so wrong as in his gloss of this most glorious of greens: "A poor vegetable, called also 'country spinach'".'
pootly/putli (*The Glossary): 'Sir Henry, ever the innocent, glosses pootly-nautch as if it were mere Hind. for "doll-" or "puppet-dance"! But one can scarcely doubt that he knew full well what the words meant in English (for which see bayadère).'
+pucka/pucca: Neel believed that the English meaning of this word came not from the Hind. 'ripe', as was often said, but rather the alternative denotation – 'cooked', or 'baked' – in which sense it was applied to 'baked' or 'burnt' bricks. 'A pucka sahib is thus the hardest and most brickish of his kind. Curiously the locution "kutcha sahib" is never used, the word griffin serving as its equivalent.'
puckrow / puckerow / pakrao (*The Glossary): 'It is easy to be misled into thinking that this is merely the Hind. for "hold" or "grasp" and was borrowed as such by the English soldier. But the word was quite commonly used also to mean "grapple". When used by pootlies and dashties in this sense its implications were by no means soldierly.'
+pultan/paltan: 'An interesting instance of a word which, after having been borrowed by Hind. (for its military application "platoon") is reabsorbed into English with the slightly altered sense of "multitude".'
+punch: 'Strange indeed that the beverage of this name has lost all memory of its parent: Hind. panj ("five"). In my time we scorned this mixture as an unpalatable economy.'
+pundit: Neel was not persuaded of the validity of the usual etymology of this word, whereby it is held to derive from a common Hind. term for 'learned man' or 'scholar'. 'A hint as to its true origin is to be seen in the eighteenth-century French spelling of it, pandect. Does this not clearly indicate that the word is a compound of "pan" + "edict" – meaning "one who pronounces on all matters"? Surely this is a closer approximation of its somewhat satirical English connotations than our respectful Hind. pundit?'
+punkah-wallah/-wala: 'The mystery of the fan.'
purwan (*Roebuck): Yard (spar from which sail is set); here Neel has underlined carefully his tutor's footnote: 'Purwan, I think, is compounded of Pur, a wing, or feather, and Wan, a ship, which last word is much used by the lascars from Durat (properly Soorut) etc., so that Purwan, the yards of the ship, might also be translated as the wings upon which the ship flies'.
+pyjama/pajama: 'There must surely be some significance to the fact that the Hind. for leg (pao) has received a much warmer welcome into the English language than the word for head (sir). While variants of pao figure in many compounds, including char+poy, tea+poy, and py+jama, sir has to its credit only turban (sirbandh) and seersucker (sirsukh).'
+quod/qaid: See chokey.
+rankin/rinkin (*The Barney-Book): 'A fine piece of English gypsy-slang, from our own rangin – colourful.'
+rawnee/rani: 'Although this Hind. word did indeed mean "queen", in English usage it had another connotation, for which see bayadère.'
+roti/rooty/rootie: 'It is my suspicion that the Oracle will absorb this as the Hind. roti, but it could just as well, as the Barneymen rightly observe, make its travels in the latter two forms, taken from the Bengali – these are, after all, the words that English soldiers commonly use in describing the bread that is served in their chownees.' It is no mystery that the English soldier does not trouble to distinguish between leavened and unleavened bread since the latter is a quantity unknown to his tongue: thus, what a rootie is to him would be to a sepoy a pao-roti. I am told that it is not merely the presence of yeast, but also of this prefix, pao, that prevents many sepoys from eating English bread: they believe that yeasted dough is kneaded with the feet (pao) and is therefore unclean. If only it were to be explained to them that the pao of pao-roti is merely a Hind. adaptation of pão, the Portuguese for bread! Imagine, if on some arduous march a starving soldier were to deny himself succour due to a grievous misconception: a simple word of explanation would spare him his cries of bachaw! bachaw! This, if anything, is a perfect illustration of why etymology is essential to man's survival.'
+ruffugar / ruffoogar / rafugar (*The Glossary): 'In philological circles a cautionary tale is told of a griffin who, having been set upon by a scruffy budmash, berated his assailant with the cry: "Unhand me, vile ruffoogar!" The speaker was mistaken in believing this to be Hind. for "ruffian", for a ruffoogar is merely a clothes-repairer.'