Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A volunteer and irregular auxiliary, serving in connection with the Turkish army for maintenance, but without pay or uniform.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun A soldier belonging to the irregular troops of the Turkish army.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun An irregular
soldier of theOttoman army.
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
From Turkish başıbozuk.
Support
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Examples
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Fellow-soldier, be a scalawag, be a bashi-bazouk, be a
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There is something about him as exotic as a samovar, as essentially un-American as a bashi-bazouk, a nose-ring or a fugue.
A Book of Prefaces 1918
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I wandered and wandered, till I was tired of spahi and bashi-bazouk, of
The Purple Cloud 1906
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Even a bashi-bazouk must have quailed before that amazing declaration and that patient resignation to fate.
The Skipper and the Skipped Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul Holman Day 1900
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I get twenty doldars for a real odalisk and fifteen for a bashi-bazouk.
Felix O'Day Francis Hopkinson Smith 1876
chained_bear commented on the word bashi-bazouk
"They then described to him the taking of a Christian city by Turkish troops, particularly by the irregulars, the utterly undisciplined bashi-bazouks employed by Ismail..."
--Patrick O'Brian, The Ionian Mission, 340
February 14, 2008