durwan
English
Etymology
From Urdu دروان (darvān) and Hindi दरवान (darvān), from Persian دروان (darvān), from دربان (darbān, “doorkeeper”), from در (dar, “door”) + بان (-bān, “keeper, guardian”).
Noun
durwan (plural durwans)
- (India) A live-in doorkeeper, especially in an apartment building.
- 1934, George Orwell, chapter 3, in Burmese Days[1]:
- Old Mattu, the Hindu durwan who looked after the European church, was standing in the sunlight below the veranda.
- 1940, Rabindranath Tagore, My Boyhood Days, in A Tagore Reader, edited by Amiya Chakravarty, Boston: Beacon Press, 1966, p. 94,
- Outside my retreat, our house was full of relatives and other people. […] Mukundalal the durwan is outside rolling on the ground with the one-eyed wrestler, trying out a new wrestling fall.