zeriba

English

Alternative forms

• zareba (particularly in figurative uses)
• seriba, sariba
• zerybeh
• zereba, zareeba, zerriba

Etymology

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

Noun

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.
   • 1884 March 11, The Times, page 5:

     The Black Watch (Royal Highlanders) advanced this morning to Baker Pasha’s zariba.

   • 1912, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World […], London, New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC:

     I clutched at a gun - my pockets were full of cartridges - and, parting the thorn bushes at the gate of our zareba, quickly slipped out.

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

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

• Zeriba in the 1920 edition of Encyclopedia Americana.

Anagrams

• braize

Italian

Etymology

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

Noun

zeriba f (plural zeribe)

1. zeriba (African type of fence)