ayah

American  

[ah-yuh] / ˈɑ yə /

noun

1. an Indian maid or nurse, especially one employed in a colonial household.

---

ayah British  

/ ˈaɪə /

noun

1. (in the East, Africa, and other parts of the former British Empire) a maidservant, nursemaid, or governess, esp one of Indian or Malay origin Compare amah

---

Etymology

Origin of ayah

First recorded in 1775–85; from Hindi āyā, from Portuguese aia “maidservant,” from Latin avia “grandmother,” equivalent to av(us) “grandfather” + -ia feminine suffix

Example Sentences

The building is known to have housed hundreds of destitute ayahs and amahs - as Indian and Chinese nannies were called respectively.

From BBC

Saraswati Naskar, 40, another ayah who lives in a slum in Kolkata and works in a government hospital, said she had to pretend to her neighbours she now worked in a restaurant.

From The Guardian

Upstairs, Amer finds her sitting in the dark, the ayah fanning her with a folded newspaper.

From The New Yorker

For evening meals, the children usually ate earlier than their parents, with their ayah looking after them.

From The New Yorker

The vocabulary I brought to them had accreted organically, from books I read — “wizening” from D. H. Lawrence; “ayah” from Frances Hodgson Burnett; “crewelwork” from Jane Austen.

From New York Times