minaretn.

Etymology: < Ottoman Turkish menāre, Turkish minare (or its etymon Arabic manāra lighthouse, minaret (compare Persian manāra in the same senses), noun of place < Arabic nāra to shine), probably in at least some instances via Italian minare (1573; 1542 in form minara) or French minaret (1654; 1606 in form minerest). Compare Spanish minarete, Portuguese minarete, Italian minareto (1764 in form minaretto), all < French minaret.The α. forms ultimately reflect Arabic manārat , variant (in words ending in tā' marbūṭa ) of manāra . Compare Persian manārat . The γ. forms probably arise from attempts to represent the ultimate Arabic etymon according to the transcription conventions prevalent at the time. According to Encycl. Islam (new ed., 1993) at manāra, manār, ‘the cylindrical towers attached to Islamic fortresses along parts of the North African littoral..not only served as beacons and lighthouses but were actually called manāras’; however, the connection with fire was soon lost (reflected in the application of the term to signposts, boundary stones, watchtowers, etc.: compare quot. a1667 at sense 1β. ) and is irrelevant to the use of the Arabic word in the context of religious architecture. While there were other (rarer and more specialized) terms in Arabic for ‘minaret’, manāra remained ‘a blanket term which does not readily lend itself to precise elucidation unless the context offers further, more specific clues’. Compare earlier minar n. and etymological note at that entry. N.E.D. (1906) gives only the pronunciation (mi·nărėt) /ˈmɪnərɪt/. A pronunciation with stress on the final syllable (probably under the influence of words in -ette suffix) is favoured in U.S. dictionaries from the 1930s onwards, and recorded as a variant in British dictionaries from the 1970s onwards: by the end of the twentieth cent. it had become the more common (but not the only) pronunciation in both varieties.