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Glite Dictionary
zenana

zenana

9.9
A private part of a house kept for women to live and meet
  • noun
  • /zəˈnɑːnə/
  • Archaic
translation icon : zenana
  • Mehrunnisa jumped up and down, trying to look over the heads of the zenana ladies.
  • zenana balcony

Examples

  • They allowed me to imagine my circumstances as romantic: some days I was an Indian princess living in a zenana, a house of women, keeping myself pure, being trained for a brilliant future.

    Fiction book (1992)

  • Bapa will be at the court with the men, and I have been called to the imperial zenana.

  • A few days later, Ruqayya sent an imperial summons commanding Mehrunnisa's presence at the royal zenana.

Synonyms

harim
vszenana
9.9

A private part of a Muslim home where women live and men do not enter

is the South Asian area for women and the practice of secluding them

Surface Forms

zenana singular
zenanas plural

Etymology

Zenana comes from Persian and Hindi/Urdu, from the Persian zan meaning 'woman', and it originally named the part of a house kept for women. So a zenana is the private women's rooms or the practice of keeping women in those quarters in South Asian homes.