almah

English

Ultimately from (deprecated template usage) [etyl] Arabic عَالِمَة (ʕālima, “singer”), originally a feminine adjective meaning ‘learned, knowledgeable’, from عَلِمَ (ʕalima, “to know”).

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almah (plural almahs or almah)

An Egyptian singer or dancing-girl used for entertainment; a dancing-girl, a prostitute. [from 18th c.]
- 1998, Catherine Gillivray, translating Hélène Cixous, Firstdays of the Year, Minnesota 1998, p. 157:
  Nostalgia is almah, the Arab dancing girl. She tells me stories of the drowned, the deadest of this world's dead.

dancing-girl