The Etymology of Hussar
Hussar is a wandering word with a tangled route. Its earliest source is Latin cursus, a running or raid, from currere, to run. Medieval Latin cursarius meant a raider or corsair — any swift, light-armed plunderer. The word travelled into Old Serbian as husar or gusar (raider, robber), and from Serbian into Hungarian as huszár, recorded from 1481 as the name for a particular kind of light cavalryman first organised by King Matthias Corvinus to harry the Ottomans. The Hungarian hussar was so effective that almost every European army copied the model in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, complete with the iconic dolman, pelisse, and shako uniform. English picked up hussar in 1532; French hussard, German Husar, and Polish husarz all show the same Hungarian-mediated form. The same Latin root also gives corsair (a sea-raider) and course — three words that share an ancestor in raid-by-running.