West Bengal
- proper noun
- Out of India's 53 cities with a million-plus population, only two are from West Bengal.
- West Bengal state
Examples
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East Bengal had a Muslim majority and West Bengal had a Hindu majority.
Academic text (2018) -
Japan has offered the West Bengal State Government 700 million rupees ($45 million) to expand shrimp farms.
Academic text (1990) -
Before independence, East Bengal and West Bengal had faced many political and strategic incidents.
Academic text (2018) -
The involvement of the highest-level political leaders of West Bengal, a state much affected by the water, helped to facilitate a breakthrough in negotiations.
Academic text (1998) -
In a major shift in diplomatic strategy, she involved the chief minister of West Bengal, Jyoti Basu, in the negotiations.
Academic text (1998) -
A lot has been written about the current West Bengal government's muddled policies, but Kolkata's decay started much earlier under the Communists.
Blog text (1) -
Sarkar, a civil surgeon who lived in Malda, West Bengal, had been one of the founding members of the Indian Psychoanalytical Society.
Academic text (1990) -
The data from the three villages of the present study strongly confirm the earlier findings that the joint family household is not the typical household in rural West Bengal, either in terms of its proportion among all households or in terms of the people belonging to it.
Academic text (1993) -
About 58,000 ha are currently being utilized for shrimp culture, well over half (35,000 ha) in the state of West Bengal alone.
Academic text (1990) -
West Bengal is known for its vibrant culture and rich history, with West Bengal as its capital.
Surface Forms
Morphology
The name 'West Bengal' is a straightforward toponym formed from 'west' (a directional/part) + 'Bengal' (the region), so it denotes the western part of Bengal and thus a geographic/political area. This compositional geographic naming pattern is common across languages, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents can reliably infer the general meaning (a region/state in India).
Etymology
West Bengal gets its name from when the Bengal area was split in 1947 and the part on the Indian side became the western half. It was called West because it was the 'west' part of Bengal, so the name tells you it is the Indian state on that side.