Hobson-Jobson / A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, and of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical and Discursive

by Sir Henry Yule; A. C. Burnell

Lay of the Last Minstrel.

1833.—

"Under tower and balcŏny,

By garden-wall and gallery,

A gleaming shape she floated by,

Dead pale between the houses high."

Tennyson's Lady of Shalott.

1876.—"The houses (in Turkistan) are generally of but one story, though sometimes there is a small upper room called bala-khana (P. bala, upper, and khana, room) whence we get our balcony."—Schuyler's Turkistan, i. 120.

1880.—"Bālā khānă means 'upper house,' or 'upper place,' and is applied to the room built over the archway by which the chăppă khānă is entered, and from it, by the way, we got our word 'Balcony.'"—MS. Journal in Persia of Captain W. J. Gill, R.E.

BALOON, BALLOON, &c., s. A rowing vessel formerly used in various parts of the Indies, the basis of which was a large canoe, or 'dug-out.' There is a Mahr. word balyānw, a kind of barge, which is probably the original. [See Bombay Gazetteer, xiv. 26.]