English 'horde' from Polish 'horda,' from Turkish 'ordu' (army camp) — the same root that names the Urdu language and the Golden Horde.
A large group of people or animals; historically, a nomadic warrior band of the Central Asian steppes.
From Polish 'horda,' from Turkish 'ordu' (a camp, an army, a royal court), from the Turkic root 'or-' (place, encampment). The word entered European languages during the Mongol invasions — the 'Golden Horde' (Altın Ordu) was the Turkic-Mongol khanate that dominated the Eurasian steppe and ruled much of Russia from the 13th to 15th century. 'Ordu' originally meant a mobile royal camp or military headquarters — a city on the move. Europeans who encountered the Mongol armies generalized the word to mean any vast, feared mass
The Urdu language is named from the same Turkic word 'ordu' (army camp) — Urdu was literally the 'language of the camp,' the lingua franca that developed among the soldiers of the Mughal armies in India. The 'Golden Horde' ('Altın Ordu') was the name of the Mongol-Turkic khanate that dominated Russia for over 200 years. Note: 'horde' (a crowd) and 'hoard' (a stockpile) are