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Cossack.

A member or descendant of an originally (semi-)nomadic population of Eastern Europe and the adjacent parts of Asia, formed in part of runaways from neighbouring countries, that eventually settled in parts of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Russian tsarist Empire and constituted a military caste, particularly in areas now comprising southern Russia and Ukraine.

7 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈkɒsˌæk/Received-Pronunciation/ˈkɑsˌæk/General-American/ˈkɔsˌæk/General-American
  1. A member or descendant of an originally (semi-)nomadic population of Eastern Europe and the adjacent parts of Asia, formed in part of runaways from neighbouring countries, that eventually settled in parts of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Russian tsarist Empire and constituted a military caste, particularly in areas now comprising southern Russia and Ukraine.

  2. A member of a military unit (typically cavalry, originally recruited exclusively from the above).

  3. A Ukrainian.

    obsolete
  4. A mercenary, a violent thug: a regular or irregular soldier, police officer or security guard employed to persecute or oppress disfavoured groups, such as Jews or (striking) workers.

    derogatory
Where this word comes from

From Middle French cosaque, from Middle Polish Kozak, from Middle Ukrainian коза́къ (kozák), from Kipchak *qazaq (whence Armeno-Kipchak խազախ (xazax)), from Old Turkic 𐰴𐰔𐰍𐰸 (*qazǧaq, “profiteer”), from 𐰴𐰔𐰍𐰣𐰢𐰴 (qazǧanmaq, “to acquire”), from 𐰴𐰔𐰢𐰴 (qazmaq, “to dig out”), from Proto-Turkic *kaŕ-. Doublet of Kazakh. First appears c. 1587 in the writings of George Turberville.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.