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namaste

interjectionnounverbattested in dialogue

  • United States//ˈnʌm.ə.steɪ//
  • United States//nəˈmʌs.teɪ//
  • India//nə.məs.t̪eː//
  • India/[nɐˈmɐs.t̪eˑ]/

A greeting in contexts relating to Indian culture or the New Age movement.

interjection

  1. 1

    A greeting in contexts relating to Indian culture or the New Age movement.

    First of all, Namaste to you! It is my sincere hope that the words of this book will assist you in living with full appreciation for all the moments of your life. Remember that each one is special and brings something to your life[…]

    I shuffled from one foot to the other outside the room, as I delayed going in. Finally, I took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, and knocked on the door. 'Come in.' It seemed that Vimla was expecting me. 'Namaste.' She said, and gestured for me ...

    "What a lovely wedding for you both. Namaste," he said, his hands in prayer formation, his smile wide and confident and sincere. “Congratulations to you both.” “Thank you, Father,” Brian said. “Namaste to you, sir,” Priya added.

  2. 2

    Thank you (via a misunderstanding of the meaning of the associated gesture).

Etymology

Learned borrowing from Sanskrit नमस्ते (namaste, literally “a bow to you”).

noun

  1. 1

    The traditional greeting when saying the word namaste, with folded hands and a slight bow.

    Krishnan introduced one of the girls as his sister. She was a small, frail-looking girl with a pretty smile. She clasped her hands, made a namaste and said, “Hello, nice meet you. My name is Karishma.” “Hello, Karishma,” said Natascha.

  2. 2

    In yoga, the pose associated with this word, usually with the flat hands held palms together, fingers up, in front of the heart and a slight bow.

verb

  1. 1

    To utter "namaste".

    The yoga instructor namasted, and the class began.

Forms

plural
namastes
past tense
namasted
past participle
namasted
present participle
namasteing
third person singular
namastes
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).