bashi-bazouk
/ˌbæʃibəˈzuk/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: 0.00 in modern English
31
Scrabble Score
11
Letters
3
Syllables
9
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Alternative letter-case form of bashi-bazouk.
Example Sentences
- "The plundering habits of the Bashi-Bazouks have been blamed in bitter language by well-paid correspondents of our press, who forget that the Bashi-Bazouk wanted clothes, food, money—was a starving zealot to a cause which could not support him."
- "The Egyptians are not a military people, and have no liking for military service. There is nothing of the swashbuckler or Bashi-Bazouk about them."
- "[I]n Russo-Turkish War, I was under the Circassians' sword and before the gun of the Bashi-bazouk here, when we carried out of this plundered, burning city, where 10,000 people were said to have been slaughtered, our two baby boys, […]"
- "For a country that is engaged in a serious armed conflict with a powerful nation, Turkey is today most quiet and apparently unconcerned. This is the more remarkable when we think of the traditional tho^([sic]) perhaps erroneous view of the average Turk, which pictures him as a bloodthirsty Bashi-Bazouk, whirling a double-edged sword and howling for revenge upon his enemies."
- "In May 1876 the crisis deepened when Turkish irregular troops, known as bashi-bazouks, put twelve thousand Bulgarian Christians to the sword in a frenzy of blood-letting."
- "[B]etween here and the capital, the Bulgars were powerless; the faintest stirrings would unloose a whirlwind of janissaries and spahis and later on, and perhaps the worst, bashi-bazouks. They adorned the towns with avenues of gibbets, the burnt villages with pyramids of heads and the roadsides with impaled corpses."
Etymology
Borrowed from Ottoman Turkish باشی بوزوق (başıbozuk, “civilian; irregular soldier”, literally “broken head”) (whence modern Turkish başıbozuk; possibly alluding to the soldiers being effectively leaderless, or to them acting “crazy”), from باشی (possessive of باش (baş, “head”)) + بوزوق (bozuk, “broken; in poor condition”).
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˌbæʃibəˈzuk/
- British English: /ˌbæʃibəˈzuːk/