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Turk

noun

  1. family name
  2. person from Turkey or the Turkish diaspora
  3. given name
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Wiktionary

Pronunciation: /tɝk/ / /tɜːk/

adj

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.

  1. Synonym of Turkic.

    “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.

name

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.

  1. A surname.

noun

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.

  1. A person of an ethnically diverse linguistic group that speaks the Turkic languages.
  2. A person of a Turkic ethnic group native to Anatolia, constituting the ethnic majority of Turkey.

    “The people of Matabello, like those of most of the Mahometan villages of East Ceram and Goram, amused me much by their strange ideas concerning the Russian war. They believe that the Russians were not only most thoroughly beaten by the Turks, but were absolutely conquered, and all converted to Islamism! And they can hardly be convinced that such is not the case, and that had it not been for the assistance of France and England, the poor Sultan world have fared ill. Another of their motions is, that the Turks are the largest and strongest people in the world - in fact a race of giants; that they eat enormous quantities of meat, and are a most ferocious and irresistible nation.”

  3. A Muslim.

    “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?”

    “Compare but our manners unto a Turke [translating Mahometan], or a Pagan, and we must needs yeeld unto them[…].”

  4. a Christian horse-archer in Crusader army (Turcopole).
  5. A bloodthirsty and savage person; vandal; barbarian.

    “Was neuer any Impe so wicked and barbarous, any Turke so vyle and brutishe.”

    “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.”

  6. A member of a Mestee group in South Carolina.
  7. A person from Llanelli, Wales.
  8. A Turkish horse.
  9. The plum curculio.