Word.ws English Dictionary

koumiss

/ˈkuːmɪs/

koumiss noun: a fermented drink made from mare's milk, common among peoples of the Central Asian steppes.

koumiss: a fermented drink made from mare's milk, common among peoples of the Central Asian steppes
Image: A.Savin, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

koumiss (usually uncountable, plural koumisses)

  1. (usually) A fermented drink made from mare's milk, common among peoples of the Central Asian steppes.
    • [Of a Persian wine] One name for this wine was 黑水晶 "black crystal"; it has also been confused with koumiss.1898, Herbert Allen Giles, A Chinese Biographical Dictionary, page 12
    • Here, for example—a Scythian koumiss vessel, third century B.C. You can clearly see the Greek influence, especially in the friezework.2006, Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day, Vintage 2007, page 688

koumiss meaning in Tamil, Arabic, Persian and Vietnamese

koumiss in Tamil

நொதிபரிப்பால்

koumiss in Arabic

fermented drink
قَمِيز qamīz, كُومِيس kūmīs

koumiss in Persian

fermented drink
کومیس kumis, قمیز qemiz

koumiss in Vietnamese

fermented drink
rượu sữa ngựa

Forms of koumiss

pluralkoumisses
alternative formkoumis
alternative formkoumys
alternative formkoumyss
alternative formkumis
alternative formkumiss
alternative formkumisz
alternative formkumys
alternative formkymys
alternative formkymyz

Origin of koumiss

Via French koumis, German Kumiss, from Russian кумы́с (kumýs), borrowed from a Turkic source. Compare Tatar кымыз (qımız), Kazakh қымыз (qımız), Kyrgyz кымыз (kımız), Southern Altai кымыс (kïmïs), Turkish kımız, Azerbaijani qımız, Northern Altai кымыс (kïmïs), etc.

Questions about koumiss

What does koumiss mean?
Koumiss means a fermented drink made from mare's milk, common among peoples of the Central Asian steppes.
What is koumiss in Tamil?
Koumiss in Tamil is நொதிபரிப்பால். See Koumiss meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is koumiss?
Koumiss is a noun.
How do you pronounce koumiss?
Koumiss is pronounced /ˈkuːmɪs/.
What is the plural of koumiss?
The plural of koumiss is koumisses.

Words near koumiss in the dictionary

  1. koulouria
  2. koumbara
  3. koumbaroi
  4. koumbaros
  5. koumis
  6. koumiss
  7. koumisses
  8. koumpounophobia
  9. koumys
  10. koumyss
  11. Koungmiut

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: koumiss (page history and authors); koumiss (Tamil Wiktionary) (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-koumiss.wav.

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