Word.ws English Dictionary

devshirme

devshirme noun: systematic collection of non-Muslim boys or young men from rural Christian populations of the Balkans, practiced by Ottomans; the boys were taken to Istanbul, converted to Islam and educated for military profession or religious disciplines.

Noun

devshirme (uncountable)

  1. (historical) Systematic collection of non-Muslim boys or young men from rural Christian populations of the Balkans, practiced by Ottomans; the boys were taken to Istanbul, converted to Islam and educated for military profession or religious disciplines.

devshirme meaning in Arabic and Persian

devshirme in Arabic

collection of non-Muslim children to be converted to Islam
دَوْشِيرْمَة dawšīrma

devshirme in Persian

collection of non-Muslim children to be converted to Islam
دوشیرمه devširme

Forms of devshirme

alternative formdevshirmeh

Origin of devshirme

Borrowed from Ottoman Turkish دیوشیرمه (devşirme, literally “collection, gathering”) (Turkish devşirme).

Questions about devshirme

What does devshirme mean?
Devshirme means systematic collection of non-Muslim boys or young men from rural Christian populations of the Balkans, practiced by Ottomans; the boys were taken to Istanbul, converted to Islam and educated for military profession or religious disciplines.
What is devshirme in Arabic?
Devshirme in Arabic is دَوْشِيرْمَة (dawšīrma). See Devshirme meaning in Arabic.
What part of speech is devshirme?
Devshirme is a noun.

Words near devshirme in the dictionary

  1. Devoys
  2. DevRel
  3. Devreux
  4. devs
  5. DevSecOps
  6. devshirme
  7. devshirmeh
  8. devt.
  9. devulcanise
  10. devulcanised
  11. devulcanises

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: devshirme (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “devshirme.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/devshirme. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.