Wiktionary

bashi-bazouk

See also: bashibazouk and Bashi-Bazouk

English

Upcoming WOTD – 24 August 2026
 
Bashi-bazouks (sense 1) on a postcard from Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey).

Etymology

Etymology tree
Proto-Turkic *baĺč
Old Anatolian Turkish بَاشْ (baş)
Ottoman Turkish باش (baş)
Proto-Turkic *buŕ-der.
Old Anatolian Turkish بُوزُوقْ (bozuq)
Ottoman Turkish بوزوق (bozuk)
Ottoman Turkish باشی بوزوق (başi bozuk)bor.
English bashi-bazouk

    Borrowed from Ottoman Turkish باشی بوزوق (başi bozuk, “civilian; irregular soldier”, literally “broken head”) (possibly alluding to the soldiers being effectively leaderless, or to them acting “crazy”),[1][2] from باشی (başi) (from باش (baş, “head”)) + بوزوق (bozuk, “broken; in poor condition”).

    Pronunciation

    Noun

    bashi-bazouk (plural bashi-bazouks)

    2. (military, historical) An irregular soldier of the Ottoman army, reputed to be brutal and undisciplined.
      Hypernyms: irregular, mercenary
      • 1855 December, “Who are the Kings of the East?”, in William Tait, Christian Isobel Johnstone, editors, Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume XXII, Edinburgh: Sutherland & Knox; London: Partridge & Co., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 753, column 2:
        The plundering habits of the Bashi-Bazouks have been blamed in bitter language by well-paid correspondents of our press, who forget that the Bashi-Bazouk wanted clothes, food, money—was a starving zealot to a cause which could not support him.
      • 1893 October, C[lement] B[oulton] Roylance Kent, “Life in Modern Egypt”, in Sylvanus Urban [pseudonym], editor, The Gentleman’s Magazine, volume CCLXXV, number 1954, London: Chatto & Windus, […], →OCLC, page 359:
        The Egyptians are not a military people, and have no liking for military service. There is nothing of the swashbuckler or Bashi-Bazouk about them.
      • 1908 June, George D. Marsh, “A Month’s Work in Bulgaria”, in The Missionary Herald, volume CIV, number 5, Boston, Mass.: American Board Publishing Department, American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 268, column 2:
        [I]n Russo-Turkish War, I was under the Circassians' sword and before the gun of the Bashi-bazouk here, when we carried out of this plundered, burning city, where 10,000 people were said to have been slaughtered, our two baby boys, […]
      • 1912 August 29, Francis E[dward] Clark, “Turkey in War Time”, in Hamilton Holt, editor, The Independent, volume LXXIII, number 3326, New York, N.Y.: The Independent, →OCLC, page 487, column 1:
        For a country that is engaged in a serious armed conflict with a powerful nation, Turkey is today most quiet and apparently unconcerned. This is the more remarkable when we think of the traditional tho[sic] perhaps erroneous view of the average Turk, which pictures him as a bloodthirsty Bashi-Bazouk, whirling a double-edged sword and howling for revenge upon his enemies.
      • 1990, Peter Hopkirk, “Captain [Frederick] Burnaby’s Ride to Khiva”, in The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia, London: John Murray, published 1991, →ISBN, page 378:
        In May 1876 the crisis deepened when Turkish irregular troops, known as bashi-bazouks, put twelve thousand Bulgarian Christians to the sword in a frenzy of blood-letting.
      • 2013, Patrick Leigh Fermor, “A Hanging Glass Box”, in Colin Thubron, Artemis Cooper, editors, The Broken Road: From the Iron Gates to Mount Athos, London: John Murray, →ISBN, page 21:
        [B]etween here and the capital, the Bulgars were powerless; the faintest stirrings would unloose a whirlwind of janissaries and spahis and later on, and perhaps the worst, bashi-bazouks. They adorned the towns with avenues of gibbets, the burnt villages with pyramids of heads and the roadsides with impaled corpses.
    3. (figurative, dated) One who does work outside regular employment; an irregular.
      • 1859, George Augustus Sala, “Five o’Clock a.m.—The Publication of the ‘Times’ Newspaper”, in Twice Round the Clock; or The Hours of the Day and Night in London. […], London: Houlston and Wright, […], →OCLC, page 36:
        Hard-working boys are these juvenile Bashi-Bazouks of the newspaper trade. And I am glad to observe, for the edification of social economists, with scarcely an exception, very honest boys.
      • 1878 March, Sylvanus Urban [pseudonym], “Table Talk”, in Sylvanus Urban, editor, The Gentleman’s Magazine, volume CCXLII, number 1767, London: Chatto & Windus, […], →OCLC, page 380:
        In spite of the temporary invasion of that Bashi-Bazouk of card games, Baccarat—whose very existence is, in the eyes of all sober denizens of the clubs, an outrage and a scandal—whist steadily keeps its pre-eminence amongst us.
      • 1883 April 14, R. W. Giles, “Pharmaceutical Politics”, in The Pharmaceutical Journal and Transactions, volume XIII, number 668 (3rd Series), London: J[ohn] & A[ugustus] Churchill, […]; Edinburgh: MacLachlan & Stewart;  […], →OCLC, page 853, column 1:
        It was not in the nature of things that the anomalous condition of pharmacy, at the period of which I am speaking, should be regarded with approval in other quarters, outside the medical profession. Its Bashi-Bazouk irregularity was too flagrant to escape the notice and censure of less interested reformers, although no overt proceedings were taken until the year 1839.

    Alternative forms

    Derived terms

    Translations

    References

    1. ^ “Bashi-Bazouk, n.”, in OED Online  ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, September 2025.
    2. ^ “bashi-bazouk, n.”, in Collins English Dictionary, 2011–present.

    Further reading

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