Mussulmen

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Archaic plural term for adherents of Islam, formerly used in European writing to refer to followers of the Muslim faith
2. An old-fashioned name for people who follow Islam, once common in English and other European languages
3. Dated word meaning the followers of the religion of Islam, used in earlier centuries to describe Muslim people as a group

Etymology: Mussulman is a plural-confused word: English speakers took its ending "-men" as the plural of "man," so "mussulmen" is a back-formed plural of a word that never had a "man" in it. The real root is Arabic "muslim," meaning one who submits, from the verb "aslama," to surrender or submit. Persian "musalmān" carried that Arabic word into Persian, and Ottoman Turkish later adopted it as "müsliman," from which Italian took "musulmano." The English form arrived through Italian, and the reinterpretation followed. Speakers who heard the final syllable of a word for a Muslim as the ordinary English word for a male human, then formed "mussulmen" as its plural, a spelling that did not come from any original Arabic or Persian grammar. The plural is the more visibly mistaken form, and it is the one that shows how the word looked to English ears.

Synonyms: Muslim