Millet
name, noun ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 Any of a group of various types of grass or its grains used as food, widely cultivated in the developing world. countable, uncountable
"[…] Tobias said, ‘Don't bother. Elena's allergic to all known food groups. The only thing she eats here is seasoned millet and rainwater they bring down from Vermont in a zinc can.’"
- 2 A semi-autonomous confessional community under the Ottoman Empire, especially a non-Muslim one. historical
"The special duties of these millet organizations are to care for the educational and other moral wants of the people […]"
- 3 small seed of any of various annual cereal grasses especially Setaria italica wordnet
- 4 Common millet, in particular of species Panicum miliaceum. countable, specifically, uncountable
- 5 any of various small-grained annual cereal and forage grasses of the genera Panicum, Echinochloa, Setaria, Sorghum, and Eleusine wordnet
- 1 A surname.
- 2 A town in Alberta, Canada.
Example
More examples"Give me one millet dumpling, please."
Etymology
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”). Not related to مِلَّة (milla).
Borrowed from Ottoman Turkish ملت (millet), from Arabic مِلَّة (milla).
Related phrases
More for "millet"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.