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WonderWord origin

Turkish ordu means 'army', and the English word 'horde' comes from the same Turkic root. It reached English in the 1550s, through Polish, as a name for the tent camps of steppe nomads.

Etymology

LanguageHistory

The story behind the card

In the older Turkic languages, ordu (Tatar urda) meant a ruler's camp or mobile court, the tent city that moved with a khan and his army. Europeans met the word through the Tatars, and Polish horda, with an added h, passed it on to other languages. The best-known example is the Golden Horde, the Mongol-led state that ruled the western steppe from the 1240s until 1502. By the 1610s English was already using horde for any unruly crowd. The same word travelled south too: Urdu, the language of Pakistan and much of northern India, takes its name from it, through a phrase meaning 'language of the camp'.

Türkçe oku
Türkçede ordu “silahlı kuvvetler” demektir; İngilizcedeki “horde” sözcüğü de aynı Türkçe kökten gelir. Sözcük İngilizceye 1550'lerde Lehçe üzerinden, bozkır göçebelerinin çadır obalarının adı olarak girdi.

Eski Türk dillerinde ordu (Tatarcada urda), bir hükümdarın karargâhı ya da gezici sarayı, yani hanla ve askerleriyle birlikte yer değiştiren çadır kent demekti. Avrupalılar sözcüğü Tatarlardan duydu; başına h eklenmiş Lehçe horda biçimi onu başka dillere taşıdı. En bilinen örneği, Moğol hanların yönettiği ve 1240'lardan 1502'ye kadar batı bozkırlarına hâkim olan Altın Orda Devleti'dir. İngilizce 1610'larda horde sözcüğünü artık her türlü başıbozuk kalabalık için kullanıyordu. Aynı sözcük güneye de uzandı: Pakistan'ın ve Kuzey Hindistan'ın büyük bölümünün dili olan Urducanın adı da “ordu dili” anlamına gelen bir deyişten gelir.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Golden Horde
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