Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • A mountain range of southwest Asia extending more than 805 km (500 mi) westward from northern Pakistan to northeast Afghanistan. It is crossed by several high-altitude passes used as invasion and trade routes since ancient times. The highest elevation is Tirich Mir, 7,708 m (25,289 ft), in Pakistan.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • proper noun A mountain range in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a mountain range extending to the west of the Himalayas

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Persian هِندوکُش (Hendukuš) "Mountains of the Indus / of India". According to 19th century reports also interpreted a "Hindu-slayer" in popular etymology. Attested in English from the 18th century.

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Examples

  • The mountains are called the Hindu Kush, which means Killer of the Hindus.

    Call Of The Heart Delamere, Wanda 1982

  • West of the Dorah pass the general level of the Hindu Kush is a good deal lower than that of its eastern section.

    The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir James McCrone Douie 1894

  • In the '70s, Mr. Freston ran a clothing company called Hindu Kush - "I had no idea what I was doing," he said - out of Kabul and New Delhi.

    NYT > Home Page By DAVID CARR 2011

  • The tallest snow-streaked vertebrae of the Hindu Kush are the first to retire into the dusk, growing opaque and flat and then disappearing.

    Foreign Policy ANNA BADKHEN 2010

  • The Hindu Kush is a remote and difficult to reach 500-mile mountain range stretching between north-western Pakistan and eastern and central Afghanistan.

    Denver Post: News: Breaking: Local 2009

  • Do you know what 'Hindu Kush' means? .... it means 'Indian Murderer'.

    Let's go while we can. 2006

  • "The Hindu Kush is the wildest and most forbidding part of the Himalayas, so high that the plane flies between, not over, the mountains, and from the cabin you look up to see the snow-capped, treacherous peaks.

    BEAUTIFUL, ALSO, ARE THE SOULS OF MY BLACK SISTERS 2009

  • Just a few weeks earlier they had been freezing to death in the Hindu Kush, but now they were dying of thirst and heat under the desert sun.

    Alexander the Great Philip Freeman 2011

  • The Macedonians had never imagined mountains like the Hindu Kush rising before them north of Kandahar.

    Alexander the Great Philip Freeman 2011

  • But whether because of his determination to catch the rebel king Bessus or because he thought that a prolonged period of inactivity so soon after the Philotas affair might serve to fan the fires of discontent, Alexander decided to press on through the winter snows toward the peaks of the Hindu Kush.

    Alexander the Great Philip Freeman 2011

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