Turkmen

noun

Turk·​men ˈtərk-mən 

plural Turkmen or Turkmens

1

a

: a member of a group of Islamized Turkic-speaking pastoral tribes who beginning in the eleventh century expanded from Central Asia into Persia, the Caucasus, Anatolia, and Mesopotamia

b

: a member of a people descended from elements of these tribes who now form a majority of the population in Turkmenistan and a minority in adjacent countries

2

: the Turkic language of the contemporary Turkmen people

Examples of Turkmen in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

There are over 14 ethnicities in Afghanistan, including Pashtun, Hazara, Uzbek, Turkmen, and Tajik, and each has its own form of ethnic dress, which vary in beading and embroidery styles. —Liana Satenstein, Vogue, 4 May 2022

Her offering includes everything from silver talismans engraved with the elaborate designs of Berber, Tuareg and Turkmen peoples to a ruby and table-cut diamond ring set in typically Indian high-karat gold. —Kareem Rashed, Robb Report, 22 Apr. 2022

Al-Qurayshi is from the part of Iraq where ethnic Turkmen, rather than Arabs, predominate. —NBC News, 4 Feb. 2022

Kirkuk had long been dominated by its Turkish-speaking Turkmen population, but the oil boom drew in a large population of poor, rural Kurds to work in the oil fields. —John Waterbury, Foreign Affairs, 11 Feb. 2020

In 1240, Baba Ilyas-i-Khorasani and Baba Ishaq, two popular Sufi sheikhs, mobilised nomadic Turkmen against the Seljuk rule in what is modern-day Turkey, demanding a revival of ‘pure’ Islam. —Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 21 Mar. 2011

Word History

First Known Use

circa 1520, in the meaning defined at sense 1