Turkey

How to spell turkey

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce turkey

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does turkey mean?

1. nounA large bird raised for its meat, traditionally eaten at Christmas and Thanksgiving.
2. nounAn informal term for something, especially a film or show, that is a complete commercial failure.

Turkey in a sentence

• She roasted a whole turkey for the family dinner.

• The expensive sequel was a box-office turkey that lost millions.

• The farm sells a free-range turkey to each family for the festive season.

• Critics called the new play an absolute turkey after opening night.

Where does turkey come from?

Language of origin: Other

Turkey takes its name, oddly, from a country the bird never came from. In the 1500s English merchants imported a similar African bird, the guinea fowl, by way of Turkish traders, and so it was called the 'turkey cock' or 'turkey hen'. When the larger North American bird was brought to Europe by Spanish explorers, the English simply transferred the familiar name to it, and the label stuck even though the creature is native to the Americas. The country name itself comes from the Turkic people and the medieval Latin Turchia, 'land of the Turks'. The spelling has stayed remarkably steady, and the only common trap is the unstressed second syllable, written '-key' rather than the '-kee' or '-kie' that the sound might suggest. Many other languages blame a different country for the bird, which is a neat reminder of how confused its origins were.

How the word is built

• turkey (named for the country Turkey, through which the bird was traded)