الطوب

Adobe comes from Arabic الطوب (aṭ-ṭūb), meaning 'the brick,' from Egyptian ḏbt (brick). The word passed through Spanish as adobe during the Moorish period, referring specifically to sun-dried mud bricks — the oldest building material in continuous use.

The technique of mixing mud, straw, and water into bricks predates the word by millennia. Mesopotamian ziggurats, Egyptian temples, and the Great Wall of China all used forms of adobe construction. But the Arabic-Spanish word became the standard English term through the American Southwest.

Spanish colonizers brought both the word and building tradition to the Americas, where it merged with indigenous Pueblo building practices. Santa Fe, Taos, and hundreds of mission churches are built from adobe — Arabic-named bricks shaped by Native American hands.

In 1982, two software engineers named their company Adobe after Adobe Creek behind their house in Los Altos, California. The creek was named for the adobe mud on its banks. An Egyptian-Arabic-Spanish word for sun-dried brick now names the maker of Photoshop.