Etymology

cossack

Cos·sack
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Today it means: A member or descendant of an originally (semi-)nomadic population of Eastern Europe and the adjacent parts of Asia, formed in part of runaways from neighbouring countries, that eventually settled in parts of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Russian tsarist Empire and constituted a military caste, particularly in areas now comprising southern Russia and Ukraine. Full definition →

Middle French cosaque ← Middle Polish Kozak ← zle-muk коза́къ
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The story

  1. Proto-Turkic · derived from*kaŕ-
  2. Old Turkic · derived from𐰴𐰔𐰍𐰸“profiteer”
  3. Kipchak *qazaq · derived from*qazaq
  4. zle-muk · derived fromкоза́къ
  5. Middle Polish · derived fromKozak
  6. Middle French · borrowed fromcosaque
  7. English todayCossack

From Middle French cosaque, from Middle Polish Kozak, from Middle Ukrainian коза́къ (kozák), from Kipchak *qazaq (whence Armeno-Kipchak խազախ (xazax)), from Old Turkic 𐰴𐰔𐰍𐰸 (*qazǧaq, “profiteer”), from 𐰴𐰔𐰍𐰣𐰢𐰴 (qazǧanmaq, “to acquire”), from 𐰴𐰔𐰢𐰴 (qazmaq, “to dig out”), from Proto-Turkic *kaŕ-. Doublet of Kazakh. First appears c. 1587 in the writings of George Turberville.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.