Devdas
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English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]Borrowed from Hindi देवदास (devdās) or Bengali দেবদাস (debdaś), the name of the male lead in the 1917 Bengali-language story Devdas, readapted several times since.
Noun
[edit]Devdas (plural Devdases)
- (India) A grieving male lover.
- 1980, Sāhitya Akademi, Indian Literature, volume 23, page 539:
- "I don't know," he had said and sighed, Devdas style: "I don't know," Everyone wants to be a Devdas, at least for a while — or perhaps only for a while. Tragic hero.
- 1996, Bruce Bennett, Crossing Cultures: Essays on Literature and Culture of the Asia-Pacific:
- It reminds me very much of the Devdas character that so suffuses Indian cinema, not just in the 1935 and 1955 film versions, but as a 'Devdas effect' in Hindi melodramas, especially those of Raj Kapoor and Guru Dutt.
- 2007, Anupama Chopra, King of Bollywood: Shah Rukh Khan and the Seductive World of Indian Cinema:
- Indians everywhere recognized that when somebody pined, longed, and raged for someone else, they were "doing a Devdas."
- 2017, Cornelius Crowley, Heritage and Ruptures in Indian Literature, Culture and Cinema, page 198:
- The character of Kashyap's Dev, although it is built on the same model as traditional Devdases, is different and suffers for other reasons.