Tangut

Part of speech: noun, adjective

Definitions

1. Relating to the Tangut, a historical people of northwestern China, or to their extinct language and writing system
2. Describing anything connected with the Tangut people of medieval Xia dynasty China or their distinctive script
3. Of or pertaining to the Tangut civilization, its culture, or the language that was once spoken by its members

Etymology: The Tangut were a people who built the Western Xia kingdom in northwest China, and the name the Mongols gave them was itself borrowed from a much older source. Mongol speakers called them "tangɣud," a form that traces back to "t¹ŋwt¹," a designation found in the 8th-century Bilgä Qaǧan stele inscribed in Old Turkic. Chinese scribes in the Ming era, writing the Secret History of the Mongols, transcribed the Mongol name as 唐兀惕, so the name passed through several languages before reaching Europe. European writers picked it up from the Latin "Tangut," which appears in the accounts of the traveller William of Rubruck. Those accounts were compiled in the 1250s, and the English form later turns up in the writings of Richard Hakluyt, who translated parts of them in the late 16th century.