Definitions

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

  • noun An official in precolonial India assigned to collect the land taxes of his district.
  • noun A landholder in British colonial India responsible for collecting and paying to the government the taxes on the land under his jurisdiction.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Same as zemindar.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun India A landowner; also, a collector of land revenue; now, usually, a kind of feudatory recognized as an actual proprietor so long as he pays to the government a certain fixed revenue.

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

  • noun historical a landowner, especially on the Indian subcontinent, one paying tax directly to the British government
  • noun historical an official tax-collector

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Hindi zamīndār, from Persian : zamīn, earth; see dhghem- in Indo-European roots + -dār, -holder; see dher- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Urdu, from Persian زمین‌دار (zamin-dâr).

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