adet

Adet is a Turkish noun with two principal senses that appear in everyday and formal language. In contemporary usage, its most common sense is as a unit or piece. When counting discrete items, Turkish speakers typically place adet after the numeral and before the noun: bir adet elbise, iki adet kalem, üç adet kitap. This usage is common in commerce, retail, and everyday talk, especially for items that are bought or sold as individual pieces rather than in bulk. Adet is used with a singular noun form, and the numeral determines the quantity rather than the noun changing its form.

The second sense of adet refers to custom, habit, or practice within a culture or community. In this usage, the word denotes established routines or traditional ways of doing things. It often appears in phrases like örf ve adetler or toplumsal adetler, meaning customs or social practices. This meaning is formal and historic in tone, and it can coexist with other terms for tradition such as gelenek.

Etymology traces adet to Arabic aadat or Persian ādat, passing into Ottoman Turkish and then modern Turkish with the sense of habit or custom. The counting sense developed later in Turkish, likely through metaphorical extension from habitual conventions to the regular occurrence of distinct items.

See also: Turkish numerals and measure words, Turkish grammar on noun counters, Turkish vocabulary for customs and traditions. In usage, care should be taken to distinguish the counting sense from the cultural sense, as they appear in different contexts and registers.