What it means
پژوهش (pajuhesh) is the Persian word for research, scholarly inquiry, systematic investigation. It is what you do for a thesis, a scientific paper, a journalistic deep-dive. It implies depth, method, and time, more than a quick web search.
Its competitor is the Arabic-origin تحقیق (tahghigh, investigation, research). The two cover almost the same semantic ground, but pajuhesh has been the dominant academic-formal term in Iranian universities since the mid-twentieth century, partly because the Pure Persian Movement pushed it. A PhD dissertation in Iran is a پایاننامه (pāyān-nāmeh) that contains پژوهش, not تحقیق, by convention.
How to use it
Pajuhesh appears in academic titles, university department names, government research bodies (پژوهشگاه pajuheshgāh, research institute), and serious journalism. It is the word a B1 learner should reach for in writing rather than speech.
pajuhesh-e jadid neshān midahad ke āb-e tehrān dar khatar ast.
New research shows that Tehran’s water is in danger.
پژوهش جدید نشان میدهد که آب تهران در خطر است.
in pajuhesh dah sāl tul keshid.
This research took ten years.
این پژوهش ده سال طول کشید.
Where it comes from
Pajuhesh is pure Persian, the noun form built from the verb پژوهیدن (pajuhidan, to research, investigate), with the productive Persian abstract-noun suffix ـش (-esh) that turns verb stems into nouns of action (compare کوشش kushesh effort from کوشیدن kushidan, دانش dānesh knowledge from دانستن dānestan, کنش konesh action from کردن kardan). The root goes back to Middle Persian and survives in classical Persian poetry with the sense of seeking, searching deeply. The modern academic sense was revived and standardized by Farhangestan-e Zaban-e Farsi in the twentieth century.
In our voice
Some speakers prefer the Pure Persian alternative پژوهش (pajuhesh) instead of the more common تحقیق (tahghigh). The Pure Persian Movement advocates replacing Arabic loanwords with native Persian ones. Adoption varies: in academic Persian, pajuhesh is dominant; in everyday speech, تحقیق still appears, especially in fixed expressions like تحقیق کردن (tahghigh-kardan, to investigate). Both are correct.
References
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