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)

  1. (India) A live-in doorkeeper, especially in an apartment building.
    • 1934, George Orwell, chapter 3, in Burmese Days‎:
      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.

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