giaour
/ˈd͡ʒaʊəɹ/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.02 in modern English
7
Scrabble Score
6
Letters
2
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A non-Muslim, especially a Christian, an infidel; especially as used by Turkish people with particular reference to Christians such as Greeks, Armenians, Bulgarians, Serbs and Assyrians.
Example Sentences
- "And far beyond the Moslem's power / Had wrong'd him with the faithless Giaour."
- "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."
- "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[…]."
- "Byron’s tale called The Giaour is supposed to be told by a Turkish fisherman who had been employed all the day in the gulf of Ægi’na, and landed his boat at night-fall on the Piræus, now called the harbor of Port Leonê.[…]The tale is this: Leilah, the beautiful concubine of the Caliph Hasson^([sic]), falls in love with a giaour, flees from the seraglio, is overtaken by an emir, put to death, and cast into the sea. The giaour cleaves Hassan’s skull, flees for his life, and becomes a monk."
Etymology
Borrowed from French giaour, from Ottoman Turkish كاور (gâvur), from Classical Persian گَاوُر (gāwur), a variant of گَبْر (gabr, “infidel”); see there for more. Doublet of Gheber and Gueber.
Word Breakdown
- Root: كاور, گَاوُر
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈd͡ʒaʊəɹ/
- British English: /ˈd͡ʒaʊə/