giaour

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English

Etymology

Borrowed from French giaour, from Ottoman Turkish كاور (gâvur), from Classical Persian گَاوُر (gāwur), a variant of گَبْر (gabr, “infidel”); see there for more. Doublet of Gheber and Gueber.

Pronunciation

Noun

giaour (plural giaours)

  1. (religious slur) A non-Muslim, especially a Christian, an infidel; especially as used by Turkish people with particular reference to Christians such as Greeks, Armenians, Bulgarians, Serbs and Assyrians.
    Synonym: kafir
    • 1813, Lord Byron, The Giaour, a Fragment of a Turkish Tale, London: John Murray, page 10:
      And far beyond the Moslem's power / Had wrong'd him with the faithless Giaour.
    • 1963, Thomas Pynchon, V.:
      We men are not a race of freebooters or giaours; not when our argosies are prey and food to the evil fish-of-metal whose lair is a German U-boat.
    • 2001, Orhan Pamuk, translated by Erdağ M. Göknar, My Name Is Red:
      I shudder in delight when I think of two-hundred-year-old books, dating back to the time of Tamerlane, volumes for which acquisitive giaours gleefully relinquish gold pieces and which they carry all the way back to their own countries […] .
    • 2004, Ebenezer Cobham Brewer, “The Giaour”, in Character Sketches Of Romance, Fiction And The Drama, volume 2, page 85:
      Byron’s tale called The Giaour is supposed to be told by a Turkish fisherman who had been employed all the day in the gulf of Ægi’na, and landed his boat at night-fall on the Piræus, now called the harbor of Port Leonê. […] The tale is this: Leilah, the beautiful concubine of the Caliph Hasson, falls in love with a giaour, flees from the seraglio, is overtaken by an emir, put to death, and cast into the sea. The giaour cleaves Hassan’s skull, flees for his life, and becomes a monk.

Translations

References

Further reading

French

Alternative forms

Etymology

Borrowed from Venetan giaur, from Ottoman Turkish كاور (gâvur). Doublet of gwer.

Pronunciation

Noun

giaour m (plural giaours)

  1. (religious slur) giaour

Further reading

Portuguese

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Noun

giaour m (plural giaours)

  1. (religious slur) giaour (term for a non-Muslim used by Turks)
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