Cossacks

Cultural  

1. A people in southern Russia who became aggressive warriors during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In place of taxes, they supplied the Russian Empire with scouts and mounted soldiers. The Cossacks are also famed for their dances, which feature fast-paced music and seemingly impossible leaps.

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Example Sentences

His family are Ukrainian Cossacks – a group renowned as warriors and pioneers of independence in Ukraine.

From BBC • Sep. 9, 2025

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 building manager suggested I should feel honored because our new next-door neighbor was head of the Cossacks.

From New York Times • Apr. 29, 2022

They not only taxed the lands and the cattle of the Cossacks but also their churches and religious customs.

From "The Chosen" by Chaim Potok