hijab (n.)

veil worn by some Muslim women, by 1906 in this sense in bilingual dictionaries; in classical Arabic it meant "partition, screen, curtain," and also generally "rules of modesty and dress for females;" from root h-j-b. It is defined in an 1800 English lexicon of "the Hindoostanee language" as "modesty, shame," and in other such dictionaries c. 1800 it has connotations of "to cover, hide, conceal." The 1906 dictionary also has hijab as "modesty."