Word.ws English Dictionary

Tangut

US/ˈtɑŋ.ɡʊt/

Tangut noun: a Qiangic people of mediaeval northern China.

Noun (1)

Tangut pl (plural only)

  1. (plural, plural-only) A Qiangic people of mediaeval northern China.

Noun (2)

Tangut (plural Tanguts)

  1. A member of the Tangut people.
    • In 1227, from his deathbed, as his armies lay siege to the Tangut capital, he ordered every Tangut to be slaughtered. His troops carried out his orders, even though he was dead by the time of the final slaughter. So complete was the extermination that until recently the Tangut were a historical...2007 October 10, Thomas Laird, The Story of Tibet: Conversations with the Dalai Lama, Grove/Atlantic, Inc., →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 111
    • In the tenth century, livestock breeding was still the basic form of economic activity among the Tanguts. Chinese officials reported to the court: 'The Tanguts live in the sands, pasture livestock, and do not have a permanent place of residence.'⁴2012 October 12, Anatoly M. Khazanov, Andre Wink, Nomads in the Sedentary World (Curzon-Iias Asian Studies), Routledge, →ISBN, page 194

Proper noun

Tangut

  1. Their Tibeto-Burman language.
  2. The logographic script uniquely used to write their language.

Adjective

Tangut (not generally comparable, comparative more Tangut, superlative most Tangut)

  1. (not comparable, usually) Of or pertaining to the Tangut people, language or script.

Tangut meaning in Vietnamese

Tangut in Vietnamese

a people of China
Tây Hạ

Forms of Tangut

Noun
pluralTanguts
alternative form (obsolete)Tanguth
alternative form (obsolete)Tongut
alternative form (obsolete)Tanchut
Adjective
comparativemore Tangut
superlativemost Tangut

Origin of Tangut

From a Middle Mongol exonym used by the Mongols, which would become the Classical Mongolian ᠲᠠᠩᠭᠤᠳ (tangɣud) that was phonetically transcribed in Ming-era Early Mandarin Chinese as 唐兀_惕 (/*tʰaŋ(ŋ)ut/) in the Chinese edition of the Secret History of the Mongols (《元朝秘史》). The designation ultimately derives from Old Turkic 𐱃𐰭𐰆𐱃 (t¹ŋwt¹) as attested in the 8th-century Bilgä Qaǧan stele. The English word, and similar forms in European languages, derives from Medieval Latin Tangut (*Tangunt in the Leiden manuscript) from the accounts of William of Rubruck compiled in the 1250s. The English form was attested in the writings of Richard Hakluyt who translated parts of William's accounts in the late 16th century.

Words formed from Tangut

Questions about Tangut

What does Tangut mean?
Tangut means a Qiangic people of mediaeval northern China.
What is Tangut in Vietnamese?
Tangut in Vietnamese is Tây Hạ. See Tangut meaning in Vietnamese.
What part of speech is Tangut?
Tangut can be a noun, a proper noun or an adjective.
How do you pronounce Tangut?
Tangut is pronounced /ˈtɑŋ.ɡʊt/ (US).
What is the plural of Tangut?
The plural of Tangut is Tanguts.

Words near Tangut in the dictionary

  1. Tanguma
  2. Tangumas
  3. tangums
  4. tangun
  5. tanguns
  6. Tangut
  7. Tangutan
  8. Tangutologist
  9. Tangutologists
  10. Tangutology
  11. Tanguts

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Tangut (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-Tangut.wav.

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