giaour

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.

Noun

  1. 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.
    • And far beyond the Moslem's power / Had wrong'd him with the faithless Giaour. - 1813, Lord Byron, The Giaour, a Fragment of a Turkish Tale, London: John Murray, page 10:
    • 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. - 1963, Thomas Pynchon, V.:
    • 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...

    Synonyms: kafir

Origin

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.

Forms

giaours