kurta
Americannoun
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a long-sleeved, hip-length shirt worn by men in India.
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a sleeveless shirt worn over or under the angiya by Muslim women in India.
noun
Etymology
Origin of kurta
Borrowed into English from Hindi around 1910–15
Explanation
A kurta is a long, loose shirt commonly worn in South Asia. In Indian cities, it's very common for both men and women to wear kurtas with jeans. A kurta is a kind of tunic, or long, collarless top. In various South Asian countries, kurtas are worn with loose trousers called shalwars or tighter pants known as churidars. Lightweight summer kurtas are made of cotton and silk, and in winter people often wear heavier wool kurtas. The word comes from Urdu, and its Persian root is kurtah, "a collarless shirt."
Vocabulary lists containing kurta
Red, White, and Whole
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Rickshaw Girl
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Amil and the After
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Off stage, Roy notes, he dressed like any other Bengali man in kurta and pyjamas.
From BBC ● Apr. 4, 2026
He wore a traditional knee-length shirt called a kurta and slippers that dramatically curl at the toes.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 8, 2025
He was wearing a silken Indian kurta, a traditional shirt, the same one he had worn 20 years earlier at one of our pre-wedding functions.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 23, 2022
Thus for him, wearing a kurta to a movie event was both an act of reclamation and, equally, a chance for him to tweak “Eurocentric and precolonial” notions about what masculinity means.
From New York Times ● Dec. 15, 2021
Dimple pulled at the hem of the kurta she’d bought with Mamma.
From "When Dimple Met Rishi" by Sandhya Menon
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
