Turk

See also: turk, türk, Túrk, Türk, and Turk.

English

Alternative forms

Etymology

From Middle English Turke, Turk, from Old French Turc, from Medieval Latin Turcus, from Byzantine Greek Τοῦρκος (Toûrkos), from Classical Persian ترک‎ (turk), from Middle Persian [script needed] (twlk' /turk/), from Old Turkic 𐱅𐰇𐰼𐰜‎ (t²ür²k̥ /türük/), from Proto-Turkic *türi- (“lineage, ancestry”) from *tür (“kind, sort”), parent of Turkish: tür, Kazakh: түр (tür).

Pronunciation

Noun

Turk (plural Turks)

  1. A speaker of the various Turkic languages.
  2. A person from Turkey or of Turkish ethnic descent. [from 12th c.]
  3. (obsolete) A Muslim. [16th–18th c.]
  4. a Christian horse-archer in Crusader army (Turcopole).
  5. (archaic) A bloodthirsty and savage person; vandal; barbarian.[1] [from 16th c.]
    • 1579, John Lyly, Euphues, page 42:
      Was neuer any Impe so wicked and barbarous, any Turke so vyle and brutishe.
    • 1760, Tobias George Smollett, editor, The Critical Review: Or, Annals of Literature, Volume 9, page 20:
      A sort of primitive barbarity distinguishes the whole; no variety of character appears; and to call a man Turk is to say, that he is jealous, haughty, covetous, ignorant, and lascivious; at the same time that a certain dignity of gait, and magnificence of manners, gives him the appearance of generosity and true greatness of soul.
    • 1987, Anne Mozley, Essays from "Blackwood", page 21:
      A bad temper does seem often favourable to health. The man who has been a Turk all his life lives long to plague all about him.
    • 1906, George Meredith, One of our conquerors, page 292:
      As much as the wilfully or naturally blunted, the intelligently honest have to learn by touch: only, their understandings cannot meanwhile be so wholly obtuse as our society's matron, acting to please the tastes of the civilized man—a creature that is not clean-washed of the Turk in him—barbarously exacts.
    • 1928, Luṫfī Levonian, Moslem mentality: a discussion of the presentation of Christianity to Moslems‎, page 85:
      They regarded the very word Turk as synonymous with ignorance, impoliteness, and idiocy. To call a man 'Turk' was regarded as a great dishonour to him.
  6. A member of a Mestee group in South Carolina.
  7. A person from Llanelli, Wales.
  8. A Turkish horse.
  9. The plum curculio.

Derived terms

Translations
Muslim — see Muslim

Adjective

Turk (comparative more Turk, superlative most Turk)

  1. Synonym of Turkic
    • 2017, Karen Malone, Children in the Anthropocene:
      Kazakhstan is officially a bilingual country: Kazakh, a Turk language spoken natively by mainly the Kazakh population, has the status of the 'state' language, [...]
  2. Synonym of Turkish

Proper noun

Turk

  1. A surname.

References
  1. John A. Simpson and Edmund S. C. Weiner, editors (1989), “Turk”, in The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, →ISBN.

Anagrams

Dutch

Pronunciation
  • Audio(file)
  • Rhymes: -ʏrk

Noun

Turk m (plural Turken, diminutive Turkje n, feminine Turkse)

  1. a Turkish person, a Turk

Anagrams
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