What it means
لاستیک (lâstik) is the colloquial Persian word for rubber as a material and for a tyre on a vehicle. It entered Persian through Turkish lastik, which itself was borrowed from French élastique (elastic), ultimately from Greek ἐλαστός (elastos, ductile). In formal or technical writing the word کائوچو (kâuchu) is sometimes used for natural rubber, but in everyday speech lâstik is what almost everyone says. The adjective form لاستیکی (lâstiki) means rubber or made of rubber, as in دستکش لاستیکی (dastaksh-e lâstiki), rubber gloves.
How to use it
- لاستیک ماشینم پنچر شد. (lâstik-e mâshinam panchar shod.) “My car tyre went flat.”
- باید لاستیک عوض کنیم. (bâyad lâstik avaz konim.) “We need to change the tyre.”
- این کفش لاستیکیه. (in kafsh lâstikiyeh.) “These shoes have rubber soles.”
- لاستیکهای جلو فرسودهان. (lâstik-hâye jelo farsudeh-an.) “The front tyres are worn out.”
Cultural note
The word lâstik illustrates a common path for modern loanwords into Persian: French or English terms entered Ottoman Turkish first, and then crossed into Persian through trade and cultural contact during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Tyres became relevant in Iran with the arrival of automobiles in the early 1900s, and lâstik quickly became the universal term. Today lâstik-forushi, a tyre shop, is a fixture of every Iranian city neighborhood, and changing a lâstik on the roadside is a skill many Iranian drivers learn early.