آسانسور is one of the most useful French loanwords in modern Persian. Every Tehrani apartment building has one, and roughly half of them work on any given day.
What it means
آسانسور (âsânsor) means “elevator” or “lift.” The word entered Persian from French ascenseur in the early 20th century, alongside a wave of European technical vocabulary that arrived with electrification and apartment construction in Tehran. It is the standard word in every register: news writing, building signs, casual speech, real-estate listings. There is no Pure Persian replacement in active use; آسانسور won the slot. Iranians say things like آسانسور خرابه (âsânsor kharâb-e, “the elevator is broken”) and آسانسور کار نمیکنه (âsânsor kâr nemikone, “the elevator isn’t working”) often enough that the phrases function as urban small talk.
How to use it
- سوار آسانسور شدن (savâr-e âsânsor shodan) “to get in the elevator”
- آسانسور خرابه (âsânsor kharâb-e) “the elevator is broken”
- با آسانسور رفتن (bâ âsânsor raftan) “to go by elevator”
- آسانسور طبقهی پنجم (âsânsor-e tabaqe-ye panjom) “5th floor elevator”
In a sentence
- آسانسور دوباره خراب شده. · âsânsor dobâre kharâb shode. · The elevator is broken again.
- با آسانسور بیا بالا. · bâ âsânsor biyâ bâlâ. · Come up by elevator.
- آسانسور ما همیشه گیر میکنه. · âsânsor-e mâ hamishe gir mikone. · Our elevator always gets stuck.
Cultural note
Iranian elevators are a running joke among apartment dwellers. Tehran grew vertically through the 1970s building boom, and many older mid-rise buildings still run on original equipment. Power cuts, weight-sensor faults, and stuck doors are routine, and tenants share آسانسور-failure stories the way other cities trade traffic complaints. The word آسانسور also signals class register in housing ads: a listing that mentions آسانسور and پارکینگ (pârking) is signaling a certain bracket of building. The diaspora keeps the word too, even when speaking Persian abroad.
The French origin is hidden in plain sight. Persian absorbed a wave of French vocabulary through the 19th and early 20th centuries, when Iranian elites studied in Paris and brought back not just ideas but the words attached: مرسی (merci), شوفاژ (shofâzh, “central heating”), دوش (dush, “shower”), مانتو (mânto, “women’s overcoat”). آسانسور sits squarely in this layer of borrowed modernity. The Pure Persian Movement has proposed بالابر (bâlâ-bar, “up-carrier”) as a replacement, but adoption has been minimal: building maintenance crews and real-estate agents stick with آسانسور, and so does everyone else.
References
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