Turk
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /tɝk/
ipa: /tɜːk/
rhymes: -ɜː(ɹ)k
Forms: form: Turks
form: Türk
form: Túrk
form: Turke
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). See Proto-Turkic *tür(ü)k for more.
Senses: glosses: A speaker of the various Turkic languages.
glosses: A person from Turkey or of Turkish ethnic descent.
examples: text: 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?
ref: 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:
text: Compare but our manners unto a Turke [translating Mahometan], or a Pagan, and we must needs yeeld unto them[…].
ref: 1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 12, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book II, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC:
text: 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.
ref: 1637, William Chillingworth, The Religion of Protestants a Safe Way to Salvation:
glosses: A Muslim.
glosses: a Christian horse-archer in Crusader army (Turcopole).
examples: text: Was neuer any Impe so wicked and barbarous, any Turke so vyle and brutishe.
ref: 1579, John Lyly, Euphues, page 42:
text: 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.
ref: 1760, Tobias George Smollett, editor, The Critical Review: Or, Annals of Literature, Volume 9, page 20:
text: 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.
ref: 1987, Anne Mozley, Essays from "Blackwood", page 21:
text: 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.
ref: 1906, George Meredith, One of our conquerors, page 292:
text: 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.
ref: 1928, Luṫfī Levonian, Moslem mentality: a discussion of the presentation of Christianity to Moslems, page 85:
glosses: A bloodthirsty and savage person; vandal; barbarian.
glosses: A member of a Mestee group in South Carolina.
glosses: A person from Llanelli, Wales.
glosses: A Turkish horse.
glosses: The plum curculio.
Derived terms: Grand Turk Island
out-paramour the Turk
Turkdom
Turkish
Turkism
Turkland
Turkless
Turklike
Turkness
Turkology
Turk's head
Turkwise
Young Turk