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rishi

UK /ˈrɪʃi/noun

rishi is a noun meaning “A Vedic poet and seer who composed Rigvedic hymns, who alone or with others invokes the deities with poetry of a sacred character” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled R-I-S-H-I, and it appears about once in every 2 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data, counting Rishi, the name). The plural of rishi is rishis.

What does rishi mean?

noun

  1. 1

    A Vedic poet and seer who composed Rigvedic hymns, who alone or with others invokes the deities with poetry of a sacred character.

  2. 2

    A Hindu sage or saint occupying the same position in India's history as the patriarchs of other countries, constituting a peculiar class of beings in the early mythical system, as distinct from Asuras, Devas and mortal men.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce rishi?

  • UK /ˈrɪʃi/

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-rishi.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of rishi

  • rishis plural

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is rishi?

Rishi appears about once in every 2 million words in written English, the 39,336th most frequent word form in the list. The list counts every capitalisation together, so this includes Rishi, the name.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Rishi in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

In the sense (post-Vedic) a Hindu sage or saint:

LanguageWords
Frenchrishi
GermanRishi

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does rishi come from?

From Sanskrit ऋषि (ṛ́ṣi), from Proto-Indo-Iranian *r̥šíš (whence Avestan 𐬆𐬭𐬆𐬴𐬌𐬴 (ərəṣ̌iṣ̌, “seer”)), probably related to अर्षति (árṣati, “to flow, pour”).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).