Burqa

//ˈbɜː.kə// noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    An enveloping Central Asian garment which covers the whole body, incorporating a netted screen to cover the eyes, chiefly worn by women in fundamentalist denominations of Islam to observe sartorial hijab (the practice of wearing concealing clothing in front of adult men after the age of puberty).

    "He fished a sky blue burqa from the bag. The yards of pleated cloth spilled over his knees when he lifted it."

  2. 2
    a loose garment (usually with veiled holes for the eyes) worn by Muslim women especially in India and Pakistan wordnet
  3. 3
    Another kind of garment worn by Muslim women (of any denomination) to observe sartorial hijab:; A garment incorporating a niqab (veil for the face). broadly
  4. 4
    Another kind of garment worn by Muslim women (of any denomination) to observe sartorial hijab:; A hijab (traditional headscarf covering the hair and neck), such as a khimar or shayla . broadly, proscribed, sometimes

Synonyms

All synonyms
burkachadriparanja

Example

More examples

"As we no longer alter the spellings of loanwords to match typical English spelling conventions, this leads to many words with unusual spellings, like "guanxi", "qarin", "kawaii" and "burqa"."

Etymology

From Hindustani بُرْقَع (burqa') / बुरक़ा (burqā), from Classical Persian بُرْقَع (burqa'), from Arabic بُرْقُع (burquʕ).

Related phrases

anti-burqa

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.