giaour

Definitions

A non-Muslim, especially a Christian, an infidel; especially as used by Turkish people with particular reference to Christians such as Greeks, Armenians, Bulgarians, Serbs and Assyrians.

slur

Equivalents

Examples

“And far beyond the Moslem's power / Had wrong'd him with the faithless Giaour.”

“We men are not a race⟳ of freebooters or giaours; not when our argosies are prey and food to the evil fish-of-metal whose lair is a German U-boat.”

“I shudder in delight when I think⟳ of two-hundred-year-old books, dating back to the time of Tamerlane, volumes for which acquisitive giaours gleefully relinquish gold pieces and which they carry⟳ all the way back to their own⟳ countries[…].”

“Byron’s tale called The Giaour is supposed to be told by a Turkish fisherman who had been employed all the day in the gulf of Ægi’na, and landed his boat at night-fall on the Piræus, now called the harbor of Port Leonê.[…]The tale is this: Leilah, the beautiful concubine of the Caliph Hasson^([sic]), falls in love⟳ with a giaour, flees from the seraglio, is overtaken by an emir, put⟳ to death, and cast⟳ into the sea. The giaour cleaves Hassan’s skull, flees for his life, and becomes a monk.”

CEFR level