English
mankurt
Mankurt comes from Russian манкурт ‘a person with a lost or degraded cultural and…’.
- Russianmodernманкуртmankurt‘a person with a lost or degraded cultural and ethnic identity and/or awareness about…’
- Englishearliest quotation 2023mankurt
attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed
Lineage
- Russianmodernманкуртmankurt‘a person with a lost or degraded cultural and ethnic identity and/or awareness about…’
- Englishearliest quotation 2023mankurt
Earliest quotation: 2023, Stephen W. Hiemstra: “A mankurt differs from a renegade in that a…”
The story
Coined by the Kyrgyz author Chinghiz Aitmatov in his novel The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years (1980), in which people are turned into docile servants (mankurts) by exposing camel skin wrapped around their heads to the heat of the sun; the skins tighten as they dry, causing brain damage, such that the mankurts no longer recognize their name, family, or tribe—"a mankurt did not recognise himself as a human being". However, this term quickly became popular in the sense of "rootless person who forgot their cultural and ethnic identity," in the languages of Central Asia and Eastern Europe.
Every English word from Russian манкурт
Today it means
noun A person with a lost or degraded cultural and ethnic identity or awareness about his or her ancestry, especially due to being affected by a dominant culture.
Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word.
Etymograph / Russian манкурт / mankurt