Turk
English
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 [script needed] (twlk' /turk/), from Old Turkic 𐱅𐰇𐰼𐰜 (t²ür²k̥ /türük/), possibly from Proto-Turkic *törü- (“lineage, ancestry”).
Pronunciation
- (General American) IPA(key): /tɝk/
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /tɜːk/
Audio (AU) (file) - Rhymes: -ɜː(ɹ)k
Noun
Turk (plural Turks)
- A speaker of the various Turkic languages.
- A person from Turkey or of Turkish ethnic descent. [from 12th c.]
- (obsolete) A Muslim. [16th–18th c.]
- c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene ii], page 268, column 2:
- Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers—if the rest of my fortunes turn Turk with me—with two Provincial roses on my razed shoes, get me a fellowship in a cry of players?
- 1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 12, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book II, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC:
- Compare but our manners unto a Turke [translating Mahometan], or a Pagan, and we must needs yeeld unto them […].
- 1637, William Chillingworth, The Religion of Protestants a Safe Way to Salvation:
- It is no good reason for a man's religion that he was born and brought up in it; for then a Turk would have as much reason to be a Turk as a Christian to be a Christian.
- a Christian horse-archer in Crusader army (Turcopole).
- (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.
- A member of a Mestee group in South Carolina.
- A person from Llanelli, Wales.
- A Turkish horse.
- The plum curculio.
Derived terms
Translations
a person from Turkey
|
a speaker of the various Turkic languages
|
Muslim — see Muslim
bloodthirsty and savage person
|
Adjective
See also
References
- John A. Simpson and Edmund S. C. Weiner, editors (1989), “Turk”, in The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, →ISBN.
Afrikaans
Dutch
Pronunciation
Audio (file) - Rhymes: -ʏrk
Related terms
Anagrams
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