Origin and history of parcheesi

backgammon-like board game for four, 1800, pachisi, from Hindi pachisi, the name of a game played on a kind of cloth chess-board with cowries for dice, from pachis "twenty-five" (the highest throw of the dice in the game), from Sanskrit panca "five" (from PIE root *penkwe- "five") + vinsati-s "twenty." The modern spelling outside India, with unetymological -r-, was enshrined 1892 by the trademark name.