Word.ws English Dictionary

hetman

hetman noun: a Cossack headman or general.

Noun

hetman (plural hetmans or hetmen)

  1. A Cossack headman or general.
  2. Title used by the second-highest military commander in Poland and Lithuania (15th to 18th century).

Forms of hetman

pluralhetmans
pluralhetmen

Origin of hetman

From Polish hetman, probably from Middle High German houbetman, heuptman (“commander”), from Old High German houbitman, from Proto-West Germanic *haubidamann. Compare modern German Hauptmann (“captain”), Haupt, Mann. The Polish e in hetman attests to a borrowing from an East Central German dialect, in which Middle High German -öu- gives -ē-. Doublet of head man.

Words formed from hetman

Questions about hetman

What does hetman mean?
Hetman means a Cossack headman or general.
What part of speech is hetman?
Hetman is a noun.
What is the plural of hetman?
The plural of hetman is hetmans.

Words near hetman in the dictionary

  1. Hethumid
  2. Hethumids
  3. Hetian
  4. Hetlor
  5. Hetlors
  6. hetman
  7. hetmanate
  8. hetmanates
  9. hetmanist
  10. hetmanists
  11. hetmanite

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hetman (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: “hetman.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hetman. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.