millet

From late Middle English, borrowed from Middle French millet; from Latin milium, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *melh₂- (“to grind, crush”), see also Ancient Greek μελίνη (melínē, “millet”) and Lithuanian málnos (“millet”).

• (General American, Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈmɪlɪt/
• Rhymes: -ɪlɪt

millet (countable and uncountable, plural millets)

1. Any of a group of various types of grass or its grains used as food, widely cultivated in the developing world.

• (food grains): Urochloa deflexa (syn. Brachiaria deflexa; Guinea millet), Urochloa ramosa (syn. Brachiaria ramosa; brown-top millet), Coix lacryma-jobi (Job's tears, adlay millet), Digitaria exilis, Echinochloa, Eleusine coracana, Eragrostis tef, Panicum miliaceum, Urochloa ramosa (syn. Panicum ramosum), Panicum sumatrense, Paspalum scrobiculatum, Pennisetum glaucum, Setaria italica, Sorghum

• (Cereals) cereal; barley, fonio, maize/corn, millet, oats, rice, rye, sorghum, triticale, wheat

• millet on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Millet on Wikimedia Commons.Wikimedia Commons

From Turkish millet, from Ottoman Turkish ملت‎ (millet), from Persian ملت‎ (mellat), from Arabic مِلَّة‎ (milla).

• IPA^(key): /ˈmɪlɛt/

millet (plural millets)

1. (historical) A semi-autonomous confessional community under the Ottoman Empire, especially a non-Muslim one.
   • 2007, Elizabeth Roberts, Realm of the Black Mountain, Hurst & Co. 2007, page 14:

     […] in support for a common Serbian Orthodox Church, the one traditional institution permitted to exist under the Ottoman millet system which sought to rule subject peoples indirectly through their own religious hierarchies.

   • 2009, Diarmaid MacCulloch, A History of Christianity, Penguin 2010, page 262:

     Christians and Jews as People of the Book […] were organized into separate communities, or millets, defined by their common practice of the same religion, which was guaranteed as protected as long as it was primarily practised in private.

From mil +‎ -et; a diminutive of mil, from Latin milium, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *melh₂- (“to grind, crush”).

• IPA^(key): /mi.jɛ/

millet m (usually uncountable, plural millets)

1. millet (grain)

• “millet” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

From Ottoman Turkish ملت‎ (millet).

millet (definite accusative milleti, plural milletler)

1. nation

• (nation): ulus