About this app
Nişanyan Dictionary is the individual work of Sevan Nişanyan. It has not received support from any private or public institution. The revised and enlarged eighth edition of the dictionary, which was first published in 2002 as the Genealogy of Words, was published in 2020.The purpose of the dictionary is to document a) origins and b) historical evolution of Turkish words in the standard contemporary written language. It is not intended to give an up-to-date definition of words.
word choice
1. Proper names (real and fictitious names of people, names of places, names of tribes and tribes, trademarks that do not qualify as genus names) are not included. Few exceptions (Allah, Turkish, Istanbul, Greek) are the exceptions. For Turkish place names, see my Nişanyan Yeradları site at www.nisanyanmap.com, and my Nişanyan Names site at www.turkadlar.com for Turkish person names.
2. Only words that have been found with sufficient frequency in Turkish written sources since 1960 have been included. Words with few results in Turkish texts were eliminated from the Google search. As a natural consequence of this rule, words that used to exist in Turkish but have fallen out of use in the last 60 years (amramak, mulabeset) or are not reflected in the general written language even though they are used in local dialects (kendürük, üyülmek) are not included.
3. It is not intended to fully reflect the technical terminology of the various fields of expertise.
4. Foreign origin words are included in the dictionary if they are commonly used in Turkish texts and without quotation marks (e-mail, waffle, upload).
5. Derivatives made from a word that is a head item in the dictionary with common suffixes in Turkish (dictionary, syntax, biological) and compounds made from words that have a headword (heading, instruction, sexologist) are not shown as separate items. However, such words are listed under the relevant article(s) as much as possible and their Turkish initial usage is exemplified if necessary.
6. Under the title of “History”, the earliest examples of a word in Turkish in various forms and in various meanings are shown. Naturally, the records are updated as earlier examples are found.
7. The words in the Turkish Language Association Spelling Guide are written in accordance with the Spelling Guide. For those that are not available, the writing style, which is more common in today's Turkish press, was preferred.
8. The dictionary is the product of an uninterrupted effort since 1995. Corrections and additions are made almost every day. The last update date for each item can be seen at the bottom right of the item. (Transactions older than 17.06.2011 are not recorded.)
