Teutons

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Members of the Germanic tribes that lived in northern Europe in ancient times ; the people of Germanic descent, especially as the term is used in historical writing
2. Groups of ancient Germanic peoples who inhabited northern and central Europe ; those of German or Germanic ancestry, a usage that is often dated or stereotyped
3. The Germanic-speaking tribespeople of antiquity in northern Europe ; the German or Germanic peoples, a term now mostly found in historical or somewhat old-fashioned contexts

Etymology: "Teutons" is the plural of "Teuton," and the name is far older than the English word. The Romans borrowed it from a Germanic people, the Teutones, whom they encountered in the late second century BCE, when these migrating tribes clashed with Roman armies in southern Gaul and Italy. The Greeks recorded the same name as "Teútones," and the Latin "Teutonēs" passed into English as a learned borrowing. The root may be very old. Some scholars link the name to a Proto-Indo-European form meaning "people," which would make it a word for the community itself rather than a label for outsiders. That connection is uncertain, though, and the name's meaning in the tribes' own language is not recorded. English did not use the word widely until the early 1700s, when it first appeared in print. Its sense has since been narrowed and reshaped by nineteenth-century writers, who applied it to German-speaking peoples in general.

Synonyms: Germans, Germanic peoples