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folk

Pronunciation: /fəʊk/

The English word “folk” has 7 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. A people; a tribe or nation; the inhabitants of a region, especially the native inhabitants.
  2. People, persons.
  3. One’s relatives, especially one’s parents.

adjective

  1. Of or pertaining to the inhabitants of a land, their culture, tradition, or history.
  2. Of or pertaining to common people as opposed to ruling classes or elites.
  3. Of or related to local building materials and styles.
  4. Believed or transmitted by the common people; not academically or ideologically correct or rigorous.

Etymology

From Middle English folk, from Old English folc, from Proto-West Germanic *folk, from Proto-Germanic *fulką, possibly from Proto-Indo-European *pl̥h₁-gós, from *pleh₁- (“to fill”). Cognate with Saterland Frisian Foulk, West Frisian folk, Dutch volk, German Low German and German Volk, Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish folk, Faroese and Icelandic fólk. Doublet of volk.

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.