kali
UK[ˈkɑːli]US[ˈkɑːli]
n
The Hindu goddess of destruction, death, and time, often depicted as fierce and dark.
n
(in chemistry, archaic) Alkali.
Etymology
The word 'Kali' is a direct borrowing from Sanskrit, entering English through the study of comparative religion and Indian philosophy. In Sanskrit, the name is derived from 'kāla', meaning "time," "death," or "black," personifying the destructive and transformative aspects of time. The goddess Kali represents the ultimate reality beyond time and form, a concept that was abstracted into English as a specific deity figure. The identical spelling was also used historically in alchemy and early chemistry for 'alkali', borrowed from Arabic 'al-qalīy' (the ashes), but this is a distinct, homographic etymology.
Analysis
This is a simplex word. It is a direct loanword from Sanskrit (काली, Kālī), meaning "the black one" or "the one who is time/death." It functions as a proper noun for the goddess.
Examples
Devotees worship the goddess Kali during the festival of Navratri.
The fierce iconography of Kali symbolizes the destruction of ego and ignorance.
In older texts, the substance was referred to simply as kali before the term alkali became standard.