Kazakhs

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A group of Turkic-speaking people native to Kazakhstan and surrounding regions, known for their rich cultural heritage and nomadic traditions
2. Ethnic individuals originating from Kazakhstan, recognized for their distinct language, customs, and historical significance in the Central Asian steppes
3. People belonging to a nation characterized by their pastoral lifestyle, traditional music, and unity in a shared history and cultural identity

Etymology: The people's name is a loan that travelled through Russian, and it is a sibling of "Cossack". The Russian form "kazákh" came from the Kazakh "qazaq", which Turkic speakers used for themselves. Its root goes back to Proto-Turkic "*kaŕgak", meaning "provider", itself derived from a verb meaning "to dig". The sense is an old one in the Turkic world: a people who dig, or a people who provide for themselves through their own labour and free movement, rather than a fixed group defined by territory. "Cossack" comes from the same source. Both forms were borrowed into Russian from Turkic and became doublets, two English words with one origin that arrived by different routes. The Russian and Western European spellings of the word then split apart, with one branch giving the name of the people and the other giving the name of the mounted warriors and frontier settlers of Eastern Europe.