TURKEY

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does Turkey mean? 

• TURKEY (noun)
  The noun TURKEY has 5 senses:

1. large gallinaceous bird with fan-shaped tail; widely domesticated for food

2. a Eurasian republic in Asia Minor and the Balkans; on the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, the Young Turks, led by Kemal Ataturk, established a republic in 1923

3. a person who does something thoughtless or annoying

4. flesh of large domesticated fowl usually roasted

5. an event that fails badly or is totally ineffectual

  Familiarity information: TURKEY used as a noun is common.

 Dictionary entry details 

• TURKEY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Large gallinaceous bird with fan-shaped tail; widely domesticated for food

Classified under:

Nouns denoting animals

Synonyms:

Meleagris gallopavo; turkey

Hypernyms ("turkey" is a kind of...):

domestic fowl; fowl; poultry (a domesticated gallinaceous bird thought to be descended from the red jungle fowl)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "turkey"):

gobbler; tom; tom turkey; turkey cock (male turkey)

Holonyms ("turkey" is a member of...):

genus Meleagris; Meleagris (type genus of the Meleagrididae: wild and domestic turkeys)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A Eurasian republic in Asia Minor and the Balkans; on the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, the Young Turks, led by Kemal Ataturk, established a republic in 1923

Classified under:

Nouns denoting spatial position

Synonyms:

Republic of Turkey; Turkey

Instance hypernyms:

country; land; state (the territory occupied by a nation)

Meronyms (parts of "Turkey"):

Adalia; Antalya (a port city in southwestern Turkey on the Gulf of Antalya)

Kurdistan (an extensive geographical region in the Middle East to the south of the Caucasus)

Antakiya; Antakya; Antioch (a town in southern Turkey; ancient commercial center and capital of Syria; an early center of Christianity)

Canakkale Bogazi; Dardanelles; Hellespont (the strait between the Aegean and the Sea of Marmara that separates European Turkey from Asian Turkey)

Halicarnassus (an ancient Greek city on the southwestern coast of Asia Minor in what is now Turkey; site of the mausoleum at Halicarnassus)

Constantinople; Istanbul; Stamboul; Stambul (the largest city and former capital of Turkey; rebuilt on the site of ancient Byzantium by Constantine I in the fourth century; renamed Constantinople by Constantine who made it the capital of the Byzantine Empire; now the seat of the Eastern Orthodox Church)

Brusa; Bursa (a city in northwestern Turkey)

Izmir; Smyrna (a port city in western Turkey)

Pergamum (an ancient Greek city located in the western part of what is now modern Turkey; the technique of preparing sheepskins as parchment was developed here)

Sardis (an ancient Greek city located in the western part of what is now modern Turkey; as the capital of Lydia it was the cultural center of Asia Minor; destroyed by Tamerlane in 1402)

Aegospotami; Aegospotamos (a creek emptying into the Hellespont in present-day Turkey; at its mouth in 405 BC the Spartan fleet under Lysander defeated the Athenians and ended the Peloponnesian War)

Ararat; Mount Ararat; Mt. Ararat (the mountain peak that Noah's ark landed on as the waters of the great flood receded)

Aras; Araxes (a river that rises in northeastern Turkey (near the source of the Euphrates) and flows generally eastward through Armenia to the Caspian Sea; ancient name was Araxes)

Bosporus (a strait connecting the Mediterranean and the Black Sea; separates the European and Asian parts of Turkey; an important shipping route)

Euphrates; Euphrates River (a river in southwestern Asia; flows into the Persian Gulf; was important in the development of several great civilizations in ancient Mesopotamia)

Seyhan; Seyhan River (a Turkish river flowing south southwest into the Mediterranean)

Tigris; Tigris River (an Asian river; a tributary of the Euphrates River)

Adana; Seyhan (a city in southern Turkey on the Seyhan River)

Abydos (an ancient Greek colony on the Asiatic side of the Dardanelles; scene of the legend of Hero and Leander)

Adrianople; Adrianopolis; Edirne (a city in northwestern Turkey; a Thracian town that was rebuilt and renamed by the Roman Emperor Hadrian)

Angora; Ankara; capital of Turkey; Turkish capital (the capital of Turkey; located in west-central Turkey; it was formerly known as Angora and is the home of Angora goats)

Meronyms (members of "Turkey"):

Turk (a native or inhabitant of Turkey)

Domain member region:

Revolutionary People's Liberation Front; Revolutionary People's Liberation Party (an extreme Marxist terrorist organization in Turkey that is opposed to NATO and the United States; attacks Turkish security and military officials)

Dardanelles; Dardanelles campaign (the unsuccessful campaign in World War I (1915) by the English and French to open a passage for aid to Russia; defeated by the Turks)

Aga; Agha (title for a civil or military leader (especially in Turkey))

bulghur; bulgur; bulgur wheat (parched crushed wheat)

IBDA-C; Islamic Great Eastern Raiders-Front (a Turkish terrorist organization that claimed responsibility for bombing a British consulate and bank in Istanbul; a violent opponent of Turkey's secular government and its ties to the European Union and NATO)

Jerusalem Warriors (ethnic Turkish Sunni terrorists who are linked with the Turkish Hizballah; killed a United States Air Force sergeant in 1991)

Kurdistan Labor Pary; Kurdistan Workers Party; Partiya Karkeran Kurdistan; PPK (a Marxist-Leninist terrorist group of Kurds trying to establish an independent Kurdish state in eastern Turkey)

Turkish Hizballah (an ethnic Kurdish group of Sunni extremists formed in the late 1980s in southeastern Turkey; seeks to replace Turkey's secular regime with an Islamic state and strict shariah law; responsible for bombings and the torture and murder of Turkish and Kurdish journalists and businessmen; receives support from Iran)

Holonyms ("Turkey" is a part of...):

Anatolia; Asia Minor (a peninsula in southwestern Asia that forms the Asian part of Turkey)

Balkan Peninsula; Balkans (a large peninsula in southeastern Europe containing the Balkan Mountain Range)

Middle East; Mideast; Near East (the area around the eastern Mediterranean; from Turkey to northern Africa and eastward to Iran; the site of such ancient civilizations as Phoenicia and Babylon and Egypt and the birthplace of Judaism and Christianity and Islam; had continuous economic and political turmoil in the 20th century)

Holonyms ("Turkey" is a member of...):

NATO; North Atlantic Treaty Organization (an international organization created in 1949 by the North Atlantic Treaty for purposes of collective security)

Sense 3

Meaning:

A person who does something thoughtless or annoying

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

joker; turkey

Context example:

some joker is blocking the driveway

Hypernyms ("turkey" is a kind of...):

disagreeable person; unpleasant person (a person who is not pleasant or agreeable)

Sense 4

Meaning:

Flesh of large domesticated fowl usually roasted

Classified under:

Nouns denoting foods and drinks

Hypernyms ("turkey" is a kind of...):

poultry (flesh of chickens or turkeys or ducks or geese raised for food)

Meronyms (parts of "turkey"):

breast; white meat (meat carved from the breast of a fowl)

turkey wing (the wing of a turkey)

Sense 5

Meaning:

An event that fails badly or is totally ineffectual

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural events

Synonyms:

bomb; dud; turkey

Context example:

the meeting was a dud as far as new business was concerned

Hypernyms ("turkey" is a kind of...):

bust; fizzle; flop (a complete failure)

 Context examples 

Number two—seven ells of red Turkey cloth and nine ells of cloth of gold.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Mrs. Weston's poultry-house was robbed one night of all her turkeys—evidently by the ingenuity of man.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

Their geese and turkeys I usually ate at a mouthful, and I confess they far exceed ours.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

In his life, his living life, he go over the Turkey frontier and attack his enemy on his own ground; he be beaten back, but did he stay?

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

A turkey, or a goose, or a leg of mutton, or whatever you and your cook chuse to give us.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

A residence in Turkey was abhorrent to her; her religion and her feelings were alike averse to it.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

While a poor fossil record is a challenge that researchers commonly face, the site in Turkey is particularly fruitful for the research.

(Fossil discovery adds to understanding of how geological changes affected evolution of mammalian life, National Science Foundation)

Then there were cats, and rabbits, and turkeys; all these he must let alone.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

A country in southwestern Asia, bordering the Black Sea, between Turkey and Russia.

(Georgia (Republic), NCI Thesaurus)

A country in Southwestern Asia, bordering the Black Sea, between Turkey and Russia.

(Georgia (Republic), NCI Thesaurus/CDISC)