sufuria

English

WOTD – 29 January 2020

Etymology

Soldiers in Bujumbura, Burundi, cooking using sufurias

Borrowed from Swahili sufuria, from Arabic صُفْر (ṣufr, “brass”).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /sʊ.fʊˈrɪ.ə/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /sʊ.fʊˈri.ə/
• Hyphenation: su‧fu‧ria

Noun

sufuria (plural sufurias)

1. (East Africa, cooking) A deep metal cooking pot with a flat base and no handles.
   • 1891, S. Tristram Pruen, “Appendix: List of Supplies Necessary for One Person Travelling in Central Africa for One Year”, in The Arab and the African: Experiences in Eastern Equatorial Africa during a Residence of Three Years, London: Seeley and Co., Limited […], →OCLC, pages 326–327:

     Two large sufurias. For baking and roasting. Obtained from Zanzibar. Large enough to hold fry-pan mentioned above. / One small sufuria. For native servants. The only way to prevent the master's sufuria being used.

   • 1967, James Ngugi [i.e., Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o], chapter 1, in A Grain of Wheat (African Writers Series; 36), London: Heinemann, →OCLC; republished Nairobi, Kenya, Kampala, Uganda: East African Educational Publishers; Dar es Salaam, Tanzania: Ujuzi Educational Publishers, 2002 (2008 printing), →ISBN, page 3:

     In a corner, he discovered a small amount of maize-flour in a bag among the utensils. He put this in a sufuria on a fire, added water and stirred it with a wooden spoon. He liked porridge in the morning.

   • 1972, Miriam Khamadi Were, The High School Gent (New Fiction from Africa series), Nairobi, Kenya: Oxford University Press, →OCLC, page 18:

     The prefects, including the choir boy, had a separate table. Their food was even cooked separately, in a small sufuria the way it is done at home, [...]

   • 1987, Priscilla Were, “The Importance of Children”, in The Kenyan We Want: An Approach to Social Education and Ethics, Nairobi, Kenya, Kampala, Uganda: East African Educational Publishers; Dar es Salaam, Tanzania: Ujuzi Educational Publishers, published 1998, →ISBN, page 34:

     Where there is no discipline, children do not perform well in their national examinations, for discipline is the mother of learning. Without it, imparting academic knowledge is like carefully boiling milk in a dirty, greasy sufuria.

   • 2000, Kiraitu Murungi, In the Mud of Politics (Acacia Biographies; 1), Nairobi: Acacia Stantex Publishers, →ISBN, page 5:

     A few days to uhuru, the local sufuria repairman, Bangarasio, was repairing my mother's sufurias.

   • 2002, Wahome Mutahi, Whispers & Camisassius: 14 Whispers’ Stories Published between 1991 and 1997, Nairobi: Seed Magazine, Consolata Missionaries, →OCLC, page 51:

     Sometimes that lunch was in the form of three raw eggs and a sufuria because there were times Damiano thought it wise to cook in school during lunch hour. Come that hour and he would light a fire, break his eggs into the sufuria, fry them, eat them and then belch as if he had just demolished a six course buffet.

Translations

deep cooking pot

• Gujarati: સુફરિયું n (suphriyũ)
• Kikuyu: thaburia
• Malagasy: kasiraoly (mg)
• Swahili: sufuria (sw)

Further reading

• sufuria on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Edward Steere, editor (1870), A Handbook of the Swahili Language, as Spoken at Zanzibar. […], London: Bell & Daldy, […], →OCLC, page 129, column 1: “Sufuria, [...] a metal pot.”

Swahili

Etymology

Borrowed from Omani Arabic صفرية (ṣufriya, “cooking pot”), from Arabic صُفْر (ṣufr, “brass”).

Pronunciation

• Audio (Kenya):

  (file)

Noun

sufuria class IX (plural sufuria class X) or sufuria class V (plural masufuria class VI)

1. pan, saucepan, or cooking pot, (in particular) sufuria