sabir

plural sabirs

1. a lingua franca

   My Greek is not the tongue of Homer or Aeschylus but a sloppy ungrammatical sabir lacking Attic salt and tending to a saccharinity which sets my teeth on edge.

   1985, Anthony Burgess, Kingdom of the Wicked

alternative sabir

1. historicalAn Italian-based pidgin language used as the lingua franca of Mediterranean trade from roughly the 11th to the 19th centuries.

   Synonyms: Lingua Franca, lingua franca, Mediterranean Lingua Franca, Mediterranean lingua franca

plural Sabirs · alternative Savir

1. historicalA member of a (possibly Turkic) people or tribe who lived around the Caspian before the arrival of the Avars.

alternative Savir

1. The (probably Turkic) language spoken by these people.

   […] could hardly be anything else but Hungarian. Beyond the Hungarian presence in this polyglot state, there were, he suggested, speakers of Bulğar Turkic, Türk and Sabir (which he viewed as Common Turkic) and various other tongues.

   2007, Peter B. Golden, Haggai Ben-Shammai, András Róna-Tas, The World of the Khazars: New Perspectives, part 8, volume 17, page 14

1. A male given name from Arabic.

1. A surname.

1. Any of several places in Azerbaijan.