Turk

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

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 تُرْک (turk), from Middle Persian (twlk' /⁠turk⁠/), from Old Turkic 𐱅𐰇𐰼𐰜 (t²ür²k̥). See Proto-Turkic *tür(ü)k for more.

Pronunciation

Noun

Turk (plural Turks)

  1. A speaker of the various Turkic languages.
  2. A person from Turkey or of Turkish ethnic descent.
  3. (obsolete) A Muslim.
  4. a Christian horse-archer in Crusader army (Turcopole).
  5. (archaic) A bloodthirsty and savage person; vandal; barbarian.[1]
    • 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

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 (surname) on Wikipedia

Turk

  1. A surname.

See also

References

  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

Anagrams

Afrikaans

Noun

Turk (plural Turke, diminutive Turkie)

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

Dutch

Pronunciation

Noun

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

  1. a Turkish person, a Turk

Anagrams

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