different between africa vs zeriba

Italian

Adjective

africa

1. feminine singular of africo

Latin

Adjective

?frica

1. nominative feminine singular of ?fricus
2. nominative neuter plural of ?fricus
3. accusative neuter plural of ?fricus
4. vocative feminine singular of ?fricus
5. vocative neuter plural of ?fricus

Adjective

?fric?

1. ablative feminine singular of ?fricus

References

• africa in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition, 1883–1887)
• africa in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré Latin-Français, Hachette
• Carl Meissner; Henry William Auden (1894) Latin Phrase-Book?^[1], London: Macmillan and Co.
• africa in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898) Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers
• africa in William Smith, editor (1854, 1857) A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, volume 1 & 2, London: Walton and Maberly

English

Alternative forms

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

Etymology

Borrowed from Arabic ????????? (zar?ba, “pen, cattle pen”).

Noun

zeriba (plural zeribas)

1. (historical) A fence of the type once commonly improvised in northeastern Africa from thornbushes.
   • 1849, Charles William O’Reilly (translator), Expedition to Discover the Sources of the White Nile by Ferdinand Werne, London: Richard Bentley, Volume II, Chapter 5, p. 112,^[1]

     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, The Times, 11 March, 1884, p. 5,

     The Black Watch (Royal Highlanders) advanced this morning to Baker Pasha’s zariba.
3. (by extension) A camp of troops employing such an enclosure.
   • 1887, The Times, 9 April, 1887, p. 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, P. G. Wodehouse, “Deep Waters” in Collier’s, Volume 45, 28 May, 1910, p. 18,^[4]

     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, The Power and the Glory, London: Vintage, 2001, Chapter 2,

     […] 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, The Three Corpse Trick, London: Collins, Chapter 5,^[5]

     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, Ice in Bedroom, New York: Simon & Schuster, Chapter 7, p. 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, R. F. T. Gascoigne, “To Within a Mile of Khartoum,” The Nineteenth Century, No. 101, July 1885, p. 89,^[6]

     […] the Brigadier ordered the force to zereba on the best position that was near.

   • 1911, “Somaliland” in the Encyclopædia Britannica 11th ed., Vol. 25, p. 382,^[7]

     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 ????????? (zar?ba, “pen, cattle pen”).

Noun

zeriba f (plural zeribe)

1. zeriba (African type of fence)