Cossack
Americannoun
noun
adjective
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of Cossack
1590–1600; < Polish kozak or Ukrainian kozák, ultimately < a Turkic word taken to mean “adventurer, freebooter,” adopted as an ethnic name by Turkic tribal groups of the Eurasian steppes
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Before heading off to the front, Shaman, his army call sign, was manning the stand of the "Berkut Military-Sports Cossack Club" in the shopping centre.
From Barron's ● Feb. 13, 2026
Then, down the broad marble staircase of Odessa marches a phalanx of Cossack soldiers.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 12, 2025
But after helping them achieve victory, their Muscovite allies sought to dominate them, leading to another Ukrainian Cossack rebellion in 1708 that soon allied with Sweden.
From Salon ● Jul. 29, 2023
Bakhmut, a former Cossack outpost that was a salt-mining town at the war’s outset, happened to be where two armies collided.
From New York Times ● May 22, 2023
If there was a Cossack in his family tree, that particular branch would have been grafted in blood and suffering.
From "The City Beautiful" by Aden Polydoros
In the Black Sea resort of Anapa, Cossacks have been deployed to keep order in queues.
From BBC ● Jul. 8, 2026
One of Babel’s “Red Cavalry” stories tells of Lyutov, a Jewish intellectual who rode with the Cossacks, as Babel did, trying to prove himself a man on their terms.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 22, 2026
Ukrainians learned that the hard way in the mid-1600s when Ukrainian Cossacks rebelled against their Catholic Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth rulers and established an independent state, seeking protection from their Orthodox co-religionists in Muscovy.
From Salon ● Jul. 29, 2023
The models for the Ukrainian Cossacks in one of his most famous paintings, “Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks,” were friends and academics from the university in St. Petersburg.
From Washington Post ● Dec. 8, 2022
The next show wouldn’t begin until three, which gave me plenty of time to scout out the area and see where the Cossacks were rooming.
From "The City Beautiful" by Aden Polydoros
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
