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folk
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
folk
I.noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a folk dance (=typical of the ordinary people who live somewhere)
▪ This is one of the oldest folk dances in Greece.
a folk hero (=an ordinary person who does something brave and becomes a hero in a particular place)
▪ Cesar Chavez has folk hero status in the Latino community.
a folk tale (=a traditional story)
▪ a book of Scottish folk tales
a pop/folk song
▪ I love all those '60s pop songs.
a rock/pop/jazz/folk festival
▪ He's appeared at folk festivals all over Europe.
a traditional/folk remedy
▪ Fish oil has been used as a folk remedy since the eighteenth century.
decent citizens/people/folk etc
▪ The majority of residents here are decent citizens.
folk dance
folk hero
▪ Casey Jones is an American folk hero.
folk medicine (=medical treatments that were used by ordinary people, especially in the past)
▪ Researchers are looking at plants that are commonly used in folk medicine.
folk music
old folk
old folks' home
pop/opera/folk etc singer
▪ her favourite pop singer
▪ a famous Italian opera singer
working man/people/folk
▪ the ordinary working man
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
old
▪ I joined other escaping mums - and dads and younger folk and older folk too.
▪ Normally, once these older folk have attended a course they are keen to participate in others.
▪ There wasn't even a pub any longer and half the cottages were empty, only the old folk left.
▪ Does he not know that people will actually die, old folk who will turn down the heat without telling anyone?
▪ Two old folk - we echo in it.
▪ I used to go along to Greenbank Hospital's geriatric wards, where I sang and played to the old folk.
▪ The village was crowded. Old folk ambled, fanning themselves with hats or newspapers, slowing down their progress.
▪ Black oral history died with the old folk.
ordinary
▪ Perhaps arising from the close personal comradeship of those war years was Basil's empathy with ordinary working folk.
▪ They looked like two ordinary folk, as they got in his car and left the lot.
▪ The key was to draw as firm a distinction as possible between the mirza and ordinary folk.
▪ Needless to say, swing has been enjoying a rebirth lately, with ordinary folk getting into the craze.
▪ But these are not ordinary folk from middle Britain, the normal protagonists on Esther Rantzen's afternoon programme.
▪ Only the faded sashes they wore, and the weapons they carried, marked them as anything but ordinary folk fleeing the marauders.
▪ He admired some of them as determined but ordinary folk.
▪ Embarrassment is the name of the game in Dame Edna's Neighbourhood Watch - and ordinary folk are the victims.
poor
▪ Much easier to turn on poor folk like Gladys Brown, who couldn't defend themselves.
▪ Packmen and poor folk rode Shank's pony.
▪ The four pharmaceutical best-sellers are witness to the poor folk who have nothing better to do than watch all-night television.
▪ Its victims are usually poor folk made poorer by the white elephants their leaders have inflicted on them.
simple
▪ Luckily for us simple folk the game plot is very straight forward.
▪ It has evolved from the simplest folk through the mannered court and finally to the expert classical dance.
traditional
▪ During the evening, there is traditional folk dancing.
▪ Tests have shown that about half of the traditional folk remedies of such areas have pharmaceutical potential.
▪ Say goodbye by joining in an optional evening's excursion and enjoying traditional folk dancing and singing.
▪ The underlying ethic is that of the traditional folk mythology from which we started out.
young
▪ I joined other escaping mums - and dads and younger folk and older folk too.
▪ I am initiating, with others, a midweek activity on Friday nights, for church young folk.
▪ The young folk were emigrating enmasse.
▪ And the care these young folk give us is fantastic.
■ NOUN
country
▪ Umbria is a wonderful region where life is simple and the people are unpretentious country folk.
▪ Sadly, country folk have caught on.
▪ Its country folk are very much at one with the land.
▪ Louisa's parents were country folk and believed very much in herbal remedies.
▪ The difference is essentially one of the spirit and it manifests itself in the habits and attitudes of country folk.
▪ The big occasion for country folk was the A&P Show.
memory
▪ Both peoples comprise regions with historical boundaries and both had memories, or at least folk memories, of autonomous institutions.
▪ It is also worth noting that after his death he seems to have remained as a hero in folk memory.
▪ That is certainly how those years are enshrined in the folk memory of theoretical physicists.
▪ The witch image, however, does, remain, at least as a folk memory.
▪ Its destruction and decay may have lodged in folk memory and been Christianised into the version we have today.
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
travelling people/folk
▪ I get the impression the indigenous locals know the travelling people keep disappearing to have some blow, and resent it.
▪ In the past, pearl fishing was often carried out by travelling people who used a glass-bottomed bucket to locate them.
▪ There are areas that are perfectly acceptable to the travelling people who use York.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ His parents were hard-working country folk.
▪ Most folk around here are pretty friendly.
▪ Stella's ambition is to get a job working with old folk.
▪ The young folk need to have a place where they can go in the evenings.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ As with folk, it's a natural process, simply reflective.
▪ But there's 100 folk after every job.
▪ I joined other escaping mums - and dads and younger folk and older folk too.
▪ The radio folk have some homework to do between now and Thursday.
▪ We want to see beautiful people we can be envious of, not ordinary folk who remind us of ourselves.
II.adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
art
▪ Yes, it was tacky, but some of those pictures were folk art.
▪ These instruments not only represent a form of folk art but make wonderful accessories.
▪ On these less-than-desirable pieces of what some think is folk art, nothing is spelled out.
▪ Hamilton, who was a great student of folk art, was driving us in the school van.
▪ Its unique folk art has been featured by the Smithsonian Museums and other prominent art galleries throughout the U.S.
dance
▪ The event will be followed by a Pan-Orthodox folk dance celebration.
hero
▪ Just the kind of marginal folk hero they would go and use as a mascot.
medicine
▪ And as in folk medicine generally, if you believe it will help, it probably will.
music
▪ At age 5, Jewel began performing in clubs as part of a folk music trio with her parents.
▪ If you hear the mandolin today, it's usually in bluegrass or Neapolitan folk music.
▪ Acoustic and folk music fans are familiar with her 20-year span of live performance and recorded works.
singer
▪ I grew up around folk singers, people who sang in little bars.
▪ According to her bio, fast-rising folk singer Dar Williams is on a constant search for truth and beauty.
song
▪ Many of her first attempts were little more than workmanlike folk songs.
▪ He came to the university, and we were supposed to sing a folk song in Tagalog.
▪ They embodied the sun in stylized forms in their jewelry and praised it in folk songs and myths.
tale
▪ But myths, folk tales, legends and, yes, religious stories are different.
▪ An ancient folk tale, it became the source of a number of legends and literary adaptations.
▪ Twilight Tales is a collection of spooky legends and folk tales passed through generations in the Southwest.
wisdom
▪ Maxims, proverbs, and other forms of folk wisdom give a person reasons for obeying rules.
▪ Like most folk wisdom it is true, I think.
▪ Some of the new findings, though, support previously unsubstantiated folk wisdom about alcohol and caffeine.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ Spanish folk songs
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ An ancient folk tale, it became the source of a number of legends and literary adaptations.
▪ He was discovered again during the folk boom that came just after his death in 1961.
▪ It has a charming folk cast to it.
▪ Like most folk wisdom it is true, I think.
▪ Many of her first attempts were little more than workmanlike folk songs.
▪ The second model is what the researchers call the gay folk construction of risk.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Folk

Folk \Folk\ (f[=o]k), Folks \Folks\ (f[=o]ks), n. collect. & pl. [AS. folc; akin to D. volk, OS. & OHG. folk, G. volk, Icel. f[=o]lk, Sw. & Dan. folk, Lith. pulkas crowd, and perh. to E. follow.]

  1. (Eng. Hist.) In Anglo-Saxon times, the people of a group of townships or villages; a community; a tribe. [Obs.]

    The organization of each folk, as such, sprang mainly from war.
    --J. R. Green.

  2. People in general, or a separate class of people; -- generally used in the plural form, and often with a qualifying adjective; as, the old folks; poor folks.

    In winter's tedious nights, sit by the fire With good old folks, and let them tell thee tales.
    --Shak.

  3. The persons of one's own family; as, our folks are all well. [Colloq. New Eng.]
    --Bartlett.

    Folk song, one of a class of songs long popular with the common people.

    Folk speech, the speech of the common people, as distinguished from that of the educated class.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
folk

Old English folc "common people, laity; men; people, nation, tribe; multitude; troop, army," from Proto-Germanic *folkam (cognates: Old Saxon folc, Old Frisian folk, Middle Dutch volc, Dutch volk, Old High German folc, German Volk "people"). Perhaps originally "host of warriors:" Compare Old Norse folk "people," also "army, detachment;" and Lithuanian pulkas "crowd," Old Church Slavonic pluku "division of an army," both believed to have been borrowed from Proto-Germanic. Old English folcstede could mean both "dwelling-place" and "battlefield." According to Watkins, from PIE *ple-go-, suffixed form of root *pele- (1) "to fill," which would make it cognate with Greek plethos "people, multitude." Superseded in most senses by people. Generally a collective noun in Middle English, however plural folks is attested from 15c.\n

\nOld English folc was commonly used in forming compounds (59 are listed in the Clark Hall dictionary), such as folccwide "popular saying," folcgemot "town or district meeting;" folcwoh "deception of the public." Modern use of folk as an adjective is from c.1850 (see folklore).

Wiktionary
folk

a. 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 (context architecture English) Of or related to local building materials and styles. 4 Believed or transmitted by the common people; not academically correct or rigorous. n. 1 (context archaic English) A grouping of smaller peoples or tribes as a nation. 2 The inhabitants of a region, especially the native inhabitants. 3 (context plural only plural: folks English) One’s relatives, especially one’s parents. 4 (context music English) folk music. 5 (context plural only English) people in general.

WordNet
folk
  1. n. people in general; "they're just country folk"; "the common people determine the group character and preserve its customs from one generation to the next" [syn: common people]

  2. a social division of (usually preliterate) people [syn: tribe]

  3. people descended from a common ancestor; "his family has lived in Massachusetts since the Mayflower" [syn: family, family line, kinfolk, kinsfolk, sept, phratry]

  4. the traditional and typically anonymous music that is an expression of the life of people in a community [syn: folk music, ethnic music]

Wikipedia
Folk

Folk or Folks may refer to:

  • A generic term for people or nation
  • Folk culture
    • Folk art
    • Folk music
      • Folk metal
      • Folk punk
      • Folk rock
    • Folk dance
    • Folk religion
  • Folk taxonomy
  • a surname
    • Elizabeth Folk (c. 16th century), British martyr; one of the Colchester Martyrs
    • Joseph W. Folk (1869–1923), American lawyer, reformer, and politician
    • Bill Folk (born 1927), Canadian ice hockey player
    • Robert Folk (born 1949), American film composer
    • Rick Folk (born 1950), Canadian curler
    • Chad Folk (born 1972), Canadian football player
    • Eugene R. Folk (1924-2003), American ophthalmologist
    • Kevin Folk (born 1980), Canadian curler
    • Nick Folk (born 1984), American football player
  • short for Folk Nation, an alliance of American street gangs
  • Folk + or Folk Plus, a folk music channel
  • Folks!, a 1992 American film
  • Folks (band), a Japanese band from Eniwa, Hokkaido

Usage examples of "folk".

Weavers travelled from town to village to city, appearing at festivals or gatherings, teaching the common folk to recognise the Aberrant in their midst, urging them to give up the creatures that hid among them.

The Empress might have enough support among the nobles to keep a precarious hold on her throne, but she had made no overtures to the common folk, and they were solidly opposed to the idea of an Aberrant ruler.

Clement, that my lord is anhungered of the praise of the folks, and is not like to abide in a mere merchant-town till the mould grow on his back.

So that meseems thou mayest abide here in a life far better than wandering amongst uncouth folk, perilous and cruel.

The said Folk received them in all joy and triumph, and would have them abide there the winter over.

Once was I taken of the foemen in the town where I abode when my lord was away from me, and a huge slaughter of innocent folk was made, and I was cast into prison and chains, after I had seen my son that I had borne to my lord slain before mine eyes.

These Sea Folk were not like the aborigines of Ruwenda, accustomed to obey the laws of the White Lady and freely accepting Kadiya as their leader.

The Swamp Folk and the other aborigines will no longer revere you and follow you and call you their Great Advocate if you are without it, will they, Lady of the Eyes?

Through it all, Abies, 41, has gone from being a religious and racial extremist to a folk hero among his neighbors.

A passing glimpse of the aerophane had been seen, and better informed folks knew what was taking place.

I shall smooth out thy frowns with a smile when thou hast heard this: this folk are not only afeard of their old enemies, the devil-led men, but also they fear those whom the devil-led men have driven out of house and home, to wit, the Burgers.

Sedan chairs borne by trotting bearers became almost as common as people afoot, and, afoot, shopkeepers in coats or dresses heavily embroidered around the chest and shoulders were outnumbered by folk in livery as bright as that of the chair-bearers.

There was a sight of folks there, gentlemen and ladies in the public room--I never seed so many afore except at commencement day--all ready for a start, and when the gong sounded, off we sot like a flock of sheep.

Soho Greek, originally a native of Agios Georgios, who emigrated to London twenty years ago, made his pile as a restaurateur, and has now come back, as these folk do, and wants to settle at home.

The Agrimony is a Simple well known to all country folk, and abundant throughout England in the fields and woods, as a popular domestic medicinal herb.