English Explanatory Dictionary

sick man of Europe

English dictionary entry

Meanings

name
  1. The Ottoman Empire.
  2. Any European country undergoing economic difficulty.

Pronunciation

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-sick man of Europe.wav

Word forms

sick man of Europe

Etymology

Calque of Russian больно́й челове́к Европы (bolʹnój čelovék Jevropy), a phrase coined by Czar Nicholas I of the Empire of Russia, referring to the poor state of the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century.

Derived words

sick man of Asia sick man of East Asia
This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.
Back to search All on S Russian dictionary Dahl dictionary