چری

Ottoman Turkish

Etymology

Inherited from Proto-Turkic *čerig (“army; soldier”); cognate with Old Turkic [script needed] (čérig, “army”), Azerbaijani çəri (“army”), Chuvash ҫар (śar, “army”), Kyrgyz черик (cerik, “soldier”), Uyghur چېرىك (chërik, “soldier”), Uzbek cherik (“army”), and, more distantly, with Persian چریک (čerik, “guerrilla”), Mongolian цэрэг (cereg, “soldier”) and Hungarian sereg.

Noun

چری • (çeri)

1. army, a highly organized military force, concerned mainly with ground operations

   Synonyms: اردو (ordu), جند (cünd), جیش (ceyiş), عسكر (ʼasker), لشكر (leşker)

2. soldier, a member of a ground-based army, of any rank, especially an enlisted one

   Synonym: عسكر (ʼasker)

Derived terms

• چری باشی (çeri başı, “commander”)
• یڭیچری (yeñiçeri, “janissary”)

Descendants

• Turkish: çeri

Further reading

• Çağbayır, Yaşar (2007) “çeri”, in Ötüken Türkçe Sözlük (in Turkish), volume 1, Istanbul: Ötüken Neşriyat, page 938
• Hindoglu, Artin (1838) “چری”, in Hazine-i lûgat ou dictionnaire abrégé turc-français‎^[1], Vienna: F. Beck, page 182b
• Kélékian, Diran (1911) “چری”, in Dictionnaire turc-français‎^[2], Constantinople: Mihran, page 470
• Meninski, Franciszek à Mesgnien (1687) “Miles”, in Complementum thesauri linguarum orientalium, seu onomasticum latino-turcico-arabico-persicum, simul idem index verborum lexici turcico-arabico-persici, quod latinâ, germanicâ, aliarumque linguarum adjectâ nomenclatione nuper in lucem editum‎^[3], Vienna, column 1048
• Meninski, Franciszek à Mesgnien (1680) “چری”, in Thesaurus linguarum orientalium, Turcicae, Arabicae, Persicae, praecipuas earum opes à Turcis peculiariter usurpatas continens, nimirum Lexicon Turkico-Arabico-Persicum‎^[4], Vienna, column 1605
• Nişanyan, Sevan (2002–) “çeri”, in Nişanyan Sözlük
• Redhouse, James W. (1890) “چری”, in A Turkish and English Lexicon‎^[5], Constantinople: A. H. Boyajian, page 719