Istanbul
//ɪ.stænˈbʊl// name
name ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
Proper Noun
- 1 A Turkish city, and the largest European city by population, which was the last capital of the Ottoman Empire and the Byzantine Empire (Eastern Roman Empire).
"Nearly a century ago, my grandfather passed through Istanbul en route to Europe along with hordes of other White Russians fleeing the Russian civil war."
- 2 A province in Turkey.
Example
More examples"The worst of living in Istanbul is getting stuck in the traffic."
Etymology
From Turkish İstanbul, from Ottoman Turkish استانبول (İstanbul), a corruption of Byzantine Greek εἰς τὴν Πόλιν (eis tḕn Pólin, “to the City”), which is how Constantinople was referred to by the local Greeks.
Related phrases
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.