also sayid, Islamic title of honor, applied to descendants of Hussein, Muhammad's grandson, 1788, from Arabic sayyid "lord, chief," perhaps literally "speaker, spokesman."

1690s, hossen gossen, said to have been British soldiers' mangled Englishing of the Arabic cry they heard at Muharram processions in India, Ya Hasan! Ya Husayn! ("O Hassan! O Hussein!"), mourning two descendants of the Prophet who are central in Shiite history. It was the title of Yule & Burnell's 1886 glossary of Anglo-Indian words, and thence was taken by linguists in naming the law of Hobson-Jobson (1898), describing the effort to bring a new and strange word into harmony with the language.