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yataghan

noun /ˈjætəɡæn/

  1. A type of sword used in Muslim countries from the mid-16th to late 19th centuries.

    The angry-faced official communicated the intelligence to a large group of Anadolian, Caramanian, Bosniac, and Roumelian Turks,— sturdy, undersized, broad-shouldered, bare-legged, splay-footed, horny-fisted, dark-browed, honest-looking mountaineers, who were lounging about with long pistols and yataghans stuck in their broad sashes [...].

Where it comes from

Borrowed from Ottoman Turkish یتاغان (modern Turkish yatağan), related to Old Turkic [script needed] (yat-, “to bend, incline; to lie”), whence also words like yatmak (“to lie”), yatak (“bed”), yatay (“horizontal”), etc.

Adapted from the Wiktionary entry yataghan (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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