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TURKISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

tantuni.

tantuni (type of street food originating from Mersin consisting of stir-fried chopped beef or lamb, etc., in bread)

7 characters3 syllables approx.Türkçe language

Meaning & usage

noun/tanˈtu.ni/
  1. tantuni (type of street food originating from Mersin consisting of stir-fried chopped beef or lamb, etc., in bread)

Where this word comes from

First written record is apparently Kartarı 1986 where the dish is described as originating in Mersin between about 1978 and 1980 through a synthesis of local Turkmen culinary traditions and migrants from Southeastern Anatolia. At the time of writing (1986), Tantuni did not exist even in nearby cities like Tarsus (25 km away) or Adana. The origin of the word tantuni is uncertain. According to a vendor named Hasan Usta, interviewed in Kartarı 1986, the name was given when they started selling the meat sauté on mobile carts about 7–8 years prior to the article. Hasan Usta claims the word is Arabic and means "soft food". Formally fits Armenian տանտուն (tantun, “a tandoor room in a traditional house”) used in the Van dialect, but it is not known to have referred to a food.

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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.