chetnik

plural chetniks · alternative četnik · alternative Chetnik

1. historicalA member of a Serbian royalist army band.

   By the end of February 1942 Glaise von Horstenau reported to the OKW that the cetniks were parading in every village occupied by the Italians fully armed.

   2004, Jonathan Steinberg, All of Nothing: The Axis and the Holocaust 1941-43, page 41

   2 more examples

   Since most Chetniks only wanted to fight close to their homes, a mobile army that could carry out sustained campaigns under central command never developed.

   2002, John K Cox, The History of Serbia, page 95

   By the winter of 1907, it was clear that a number of the četnik bands were operating in Macedonia independently of any supervision; only with some difficulty did an emissary from Belgrade succeed in re-imposing control.

   2012, Christopher Clark, The Sleepwalkers, Penguin, published 2013, page 27

2. An adherent of a nationalist revival of the historical Chetnik movement.

   1 more example

   The Visegrad gathering, which saw uniform-wearing participants singing songs that included lines such as "there will be hell, the Drina will be bloody, here come the Chetniks from the Serb mountains’, provoked wariness and fear among Bosniak residents who survived some of the worst atrocities committed by Chetniks.

   2019 March 11, Mersiha Gadzo, “Serb Chetnik gathering in Bosnia’s Visegrad raises alarm”, in Al Jazeera

plural Chetniks

1. Alternative letter-case form of chetnik.