Kets

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Plural form referring to a Siberian ethnic group native to the Yenisei River region ; a contraction used informally to refer to the hallucinogenic substance ketamine
2. Designating more than one member of an indigenous people originating along the Yenisei basin in Russia ; slang abbreviation for a dissociative anesthetic drug
3. The collective name for an ancient Yeniseian group residing in Siberia ; colloquial shorthand for a mind-altering medication known among recreational users

Etymology: The Ket are an indigenous people of the Yenisei River basin in central Siberia, and their name is the plural of "ket," a word meaning "man" or "person" in their own language. Their population is small, and their language is one of the few surviving members of the Yeniseian family, which has no known close relatives among living languages. The Russian term for them, "Ketskiy," and the English plural "kets" follow the same root. Because the group is so small and remote, the word was largely unknown to English speakers until linguists and ethnographers began documenting them in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.