giaour
Definition from Wiktionary, the free dictionary
Contents |
[edit] English
[edit] Etymology
From Turkish gavur, from Persian گور (gaur, “pagan, infidel”), a variant of گبر (gabr), probably from Arabic كافر (kāfir, “unbeliever”).
[edit] Pronunciation
- IPA: /ˈʤaʊə/
[edit] Noun
giaour (plural giaours)
- (derogatory, ethnic slur) A non-Muslim, especially a Christian, an infidel; especially as used by Turkish people with particular reference to Christians like Greeks, Armenians, Bulgarians, Serbs and Assyrians.
- 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, My Name Is Red, tr. Erdağ M Göknar:
- 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 [...].
- 1963, Thomas Pynchon, V.:
