zeriba

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English

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Alternative forms

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Etymology

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Borrowed from Arabic زَرِيبَة (zarība, pen, cattle pen).

Noun

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zeriba (plural zeribas)

  1. (historical) A fence of the type once commonly improvised in northeastern Africa from thornbushes.
    • 1849, Ferdinand Werne, chapter 5, in Charles William O’Reilly, transl., Expedition to Discover the Sources of the White Nile[1], volume II, London: Richard Bentley, page 112:
      On the left shore two neat farmyards shew themselves in a shining seriba of reeds, the stalks of which are connected very regularly with each other, but perhaps only afford resistance to tame animals.
    • 1895, A. H. Keane, Africa, Volume I, North Africa, (Stanford’s Compendium of Geography and Travel), London: Edward Stanford, Chapter 5, p. 245, footnote 1,[2]
      In Arabic zeriba means any kind of rough and ready fenced enclosure; hence the expression “zeriba country” applied by some geographers to the northern slope of the Nile-Congo divide, where the Arab traders and slave-hunters had founded numerous palisaded stations long before the establishment of the Egyptian administration in that region.
  2. (by extension) An improvised stockade, particularly those similarly located and constructed.
  3. (by extension) A camp of troops employing such an enclosure.
    • 1887 April 9, The Times, page 5:
      [] forming a zariba, or square, to resist cavalry.
  4. (by extension) Any wild and barbed barrier, evocative of a briar or thorn patch.
    • 1910 May 28, P. G. Wodehouse, “Deep Waters”, in Collier’s, volume 45, page 18:
      Once you had passed the initial zareba of fruit stands, souvenir stands, ice-cream stands, and the lair of the enthusiast whose aim in life it was to sell you picture postal-cards, and had won through to the long walk where the seats were, you were practically alone with Nature.
    • 1940, Graham Greene, chapter 2, in The Power and the Glory, London: Vintage, published 2001:
      [] a small withered soldier sat by the prison door with a gun between his knees and the shadows of the palms pointed at him like a zareba of sabres.
    • 1944, Miles Burton, chapter 5, in The Three Corpse Trick[3], London: Collins:
      The hovel stood in the centre of what had once been a vegetable garden, but was now a patch of rank weeds. Surrounding this, almost like a zareba, was an irregular ring of gorse and brambles, an unclaimed vestige of the original common.
    • 1961, P. G. Wodehouse, chapter 7, in Ice in the Bedroom, New York: Simon & Schuster, page 52:
      Owing to his obiter dicta having to be filtered through a zareba of white hair, it was not always easy to catch exactly what Mr. Cornelius said.

Verb

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zeriba (third-person singular simple present zeribas, present participle zeribaing, simple past and past participle zeribaed)

  1. To erect or take refuge within a zeriba.
    • 1885 July, R. F. T. Gascoigne, “To Within a Mile of Khartoum”, in The Nineteenth Century, number 101, page 89:
      [] the Brigadier ordered the force to zereba on the best position that was near.
    • 1911, Somaliland[4], 11th edition, volume 25, Encyclopædia Britannica, page 382:
      On the 2nd of June a small force, zeribaed under Captain Malcolm McNeill, was attacked by the mullah’s followers but repulsed after desperate fighting.

Further reading

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Anagrams

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Italian

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Etymology

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Borrowed from Arabic زَرِيبَة (zarība, pen, cattle pen).

Noun

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zeriba f (plural zeribe)

  1. zeriba (African type of fence)