What it means
غرب (gharb) means “west” as a compass direction and, in broader usage, “the West” as a cultural or geopolitical idea. The word is borrowed from Arabic, where the root غ-ر-ب also gives maghreb (sunset, northwest Africa) and ghorub (sunset). Native Persian once used bakhtar (باختر) for west, and that word still appears in formal or literary writing, but gharb has become the everyday standard. Its counterpart is shargh (شرق), meaning east.
How to use it
- خورشید از غرب غروب میکند. (Khorshid az gharb ghorub mikonad.) “The sun sets in the west.”
- خونهشون تو غرب تهرانه. (Khuneshun tu gharb-e Tehrane.) “Their house is in west Tehran.”
- رابطهی ایران با غرب پیچیدهست. (Râbete-ye Iran ba gharb pichidast.) “Iran’s relationship with the West is complicated.”
- باید به سمت غرب بریم. (Bayad be samte gharb berim.) “We need to go west.”
Cultural note
In Iranian public discourse, غرب carries political weight beyond its geographic meaning. The phrase غربزدگی (gharb-zadegi), coined by writer Jalal Al-e Ahmad and translatable as “Westoxication” or “Occidentosis,” describes an uncritical infatuation with Western culture, and it remains a reference point in debates about cultural identity. When Iranians say someone is “gharbi” (غربی), they may mean literally “western” or, in a charged context, culturally aligned with the West. The Arabic cognate Maghreb (مغرب), meaning the lands of the setting sun, shares the same root and is also the Arabic word for Morocco.