Arnaut

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A term denoting a specific type of soldier, particularly one hired for military service in foreign lands
2. Referring to a mercenary or paid fighter, often associated with the Middle Ages and local conflicts
3. Used historically to describe warriors from a certain region or background, engaged in combat for monetary compensation

Etymology: The English word is a borrowing of a name for a people, and its meaning drifted from ethnicity to occupation. "Arnaut" comes from Turkish "arnavut," the Turkish name for the Albanians. Over the centuries, Albanian men were widely recruited as soldiers across the Ottoman world, so the name of a nationality came to stand for the mercenary who fought for pay. The chain of names runs through Greek. Ancient Greek "Albanoi" gave Medieval Greek "Arbanitai," the name used for the Albanians. Turkish speakers rearranged the syllables of that name: the "van" in "Arvanitis" became "nav," producing "arnavut" and the variant "arnaut." From Turkish, the word then passed into Bulgarian, which is where many English readers would have first met it in writing about the Balkans.

Synonyms: Albanian, mountaineer, highlander