purdah

From Urdu پردہ‎ (parda), and its source, Persian پرده‎ (parda, “curtain”).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈpəːdɑː/, /ˈpəːdə/

purdah (countable and uncountable, plural purdahs)

1. (chiefly South Asia) A curtain, especially as used to conceal and divide women from men and strangers in some Hindu or Muslim traditions. [from 17th c.]
   • 1888, Rudyard Kipling, ‘A Wayside Comedy’, Under the Deodars, Folio Society 2005, p. 34:

     As she passed through the dining-room, she heard, behind the purdah that cloaked the drawing-room door, her husband's voice […]

   • 1924, EM Forster, A Passage to India, Penguin 2005, p. 11:

     ‘Come and see my wife a little then,’ said Hamidullah, and they spent twenty minutes behind the purdah.

2. (rare, obsolete) A striped cotton cloth which is used to make curtains. [19th c.]
3. The state or system of social gender seclusion in some Muslim or Hindu communities. [from 19th c.]
4. A long veil, or other all-enveloping clothing, worn by women in some Muslim societies. [from 20th c.]
5. (figuratively) Secrecy, isolation. [from 20th c.]
6. (Britain) The period immediately before an election or referendum during which restrictions are in force on the activity of civil servants.

The use of a term that refers to the practice of secluding women for the pre-election period in the UK may be found offensive.

• purdahnashin

• hard up

purdah (plural purdah-purdah, informal first-person possessive purdahku, informal second-person possessive purdahmu, third-person possessive purdahnya)

1. veil (for a woman's face)