assegai
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English
[edit]![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/63/An_African_soldier_or_%27Askari%27_on_guard_duty_at_No._23_Air_School_at_Waterkloof%2C_Pretoria%2C_South_Africa%2C_January_1943._TR1262.jpg/220px-An_African_soldier_or_%27Askari%27_on_guard_duty_at_No._23_Air_School_at_Waterkloof%2C_Pretoria%2C_South_Africa%2C_January_1943._TR1262.jpg)
Alternative forms
[edit]- assagai, assagaie, assagay, assegaai, assegay, azagaia, hassagay, hassaguay, zagaie, zagaye (obsolete)
Etymology
[edit]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
[edit]Noun
[edit]assegai (plural assegais)
- 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.
- 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
[edit]slim hardwood spear or javelin with an iron tip
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tree species Curtisia dentata
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Verb
[edit]assegai (third-person singular simple present assegais, present participle assegaiing, simple past and past participle assegaied)
- To spear with an assegai.
See also
[edit]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
Categories:
- English terms derived from French
- English terms derived from Portuguese
- English terms derived from Spanish
- English terms borrowed from Afrikaans
- English terms derived from Afrikaans
- English terms derived from Arabic
- English terms derived from Proto-Berber
- English 3-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- English lemmas
- English nouns
- English countable nouns
- English terms with quotations
- English verbs
- en:Cornales order plants
- en:Spears