Turk

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

English

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Alternative forms

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Etymology

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From Middle English Turke, Turk, from Old French Turc, from Medieval Latin Turcus, from Byzantine Greek Τοῦρκος (Toûrkos), from Classical Persian تُرْک (turk), from Middle Persian [script needed] (twlk' /⁠turk⁠/), from Old Turkic 𐱅𐰇𐰼𐰜 (t²ür²k̥). See Proto-Turkic *tür(ü)k for more.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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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[1], 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

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Translations

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Adjective

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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

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 Turk (surname) on Wikipedia

Turk

  1. A surname.

See also

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References

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

Further reading

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Anagrams

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Afrikaans

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Noun

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Turk (plural Turke, diminutive Turkie)

  1. Turk (person from Turkey or of Turkish descent)
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Dutch

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Pronunciation

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Noun

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

  1. a Turkish person, a Turk
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Anagrams

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