Habibi...The meaning

Habibi... this is the word that my brother used to address me the other day. I asked, 'what is the meaning of Habibi'? To which he replied that he doesn't know and people in UAE uses this term for ladies so that explain him calling me HABIBI.

That got me thinking... this word is one of those popular terms of which we know nothing concrete. We can not give an exact definition of the word, Habibi.

Well after a little research I found out that Habibi is an Arabic word that means 'My love' or 'My beloved'. Habibi is the form of the word used to refer to men. The feminine form is 'habibti'. Habibi generates from the word love, so basically it means my beloved one, but it's not just for like two persons in love, it can be said with a mother and her son... etc, please note that in Arabic there are not separate words for the verbs like & love, they are the same, so we would say the father loves his child & the girlfriend loves her boyfriend!

Habibi has Muslim origin which is derived from its adjective 'Habib' that means ‘beloved’, ‘friend’, used by both Muslims and Jews. Habibullah, ‘beloved of Allah’ is an epithet of Mohammad.

Well, we have a endless list of songs and dialogues from bollywood itself which popularized this word but failed every time to explain the original meaning of it...

Hope this article will make you understand the term partly, if not fully!!