assegai

English

A guard with assegai in South Africa, 1943.

Alternative forms

• assagai, assagaie, assagay, assegaai, assegay, azagaia, hassagay, hassaguay, zagaie, zagaye (obsolete)

Etymology

From French azagaie (now zagaie) or Portuguese azagaia, Spanish azagaya, and later in the forms that have become most common borrowed from Afrikaans assegaai, from colloquial Arabic اَلزَّغَايَة (az-zaḡāya), from Proto-Berber *zaġāya (“spear”).

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈæsəɡaɪ/

Noun

assegai (plural assegais)

1. A slim hardwood spear or javelin with an iron tip, especially those used by Bantu peoples of Southern Africa.
   • 1880, Richard Francis Burton, Os Lusíadas, volume I, page 33:

     But now the Moormen, stalking o'er the strand / to guard the wat'ery stores the strangers need; / this, targe on arm and assegai in hand, / that, with his bended bow, and venom'd reed[.]

   • 1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter VIII, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC:

     My client welcomed the judge […] and they disappeared together into the Ethiopian card-room, which was filled with the assegais and exclamation point shields Mr. Cooke had had made at the sawmill at Beaverton.

   • 1899 February, Joseph Conrad, “The Heart of Darkness”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume CLXV, number M, New York, N.Y.: The Leonard Scott Publishing Company, […], →OCLC, part I, page 213:

     Native mats covered the clay walls; a collection of spears, assegais, shields, knives was hung up in trophies.

   • 1922, James Joyce, Ulysses:

     A birdchief, bluestreaked and feathered in war panoply with his assegai, striding through a crackling canebrake over beechmast and acorns.

   • 1994, Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela, London: Abacus, published 2010, page 32:

     Without a word, he took my foreskin, pulled it forward, and then, in a single motion, brought down his assegai.

2. The tree species Curtisia dentata, the wood of which is traditionally used to make assegais.
   • 2019, Marlon James, Black Leopard, Red Wolf, Hamish Hamilton, page 236:

     In the clearing, built around the base of an assegai tree, stood a hut, plastered in cow dung.

Translations

slim hardwood spear or javelin with an iron tip

• Afrikaans: assegaai
• Arabic: زَغَايَة f (zaḡāya)
• Catalan: atzagaia (ca) f
• Dutch: assagaai (nl), assegaai (nl)
• French: sagaie (fr) f, zagaie (fr) f
• German: Assagai m
• Ido: zagayo (io)
• Italian: zagaglia (it) f
• Portuguese: azagaia (pt) f, zagaia (pt) f
• Spanish: azagaya (es) f
• Swedish: assegaj (sv) c
• Zulu: umkhonto class 3/4

tree species Curtisia dentata

• Afrikaans: assegai, assegaaiboom
• Portuguese: azagaia (pt)

Verb

assegai (third-person singular simple present assegais, present participle assegaiing, simple past and past participle assegaied)

1. To spear with an assegai.

See also

• assegai on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Curtisia on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Curtisia on Wikispecies.Wikispecies
• Category:assegai on Wikimedia Commons.Wikimedia Commons
• Category:Curtisia on Wikimedia Commons.Wikimedia Commons