| Sahib or Saheb (, traditionally ; Perso-Arab: صاحب, Devanagari: साहिब, Gurmukhi: ਸਾਹਿਬ, Bengali: সাহেব) is a word of Arabic origin meaning "companion". As a loanword, it has passed into several languages, including Persian, Kurdish, Turkish, Kazakh, Uzbek, Turkmen, Tajik, Crimean Tatar, Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi, Pashto, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Rohingya and Somali. During mediaeval times, it was used as a term of address, either as an official title or an honorific. Now, in South and Central Asia, it's almost exclusively used to give respect to someone higher in social ladder or bosses. For eg,drivers address their boss as sahab and so on. The honorific has largely been replaced with Sir. It is often shortened to saab. |
