Meaning of zeriba | Babel Free

Definitions

1. A fence of the type once commonly improvised in northeastern Africa from thornbushes.
   historical
2. An improvised stockade, particularly those similarly located and constructed.
   broadly
3. A camp of troops employing such an enclosure.
   broadly
4. Any wild and barbed barrier, evocative of a briar or thorn patch.
   broadly

Equivalents

Examples

“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, 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.”

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

“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.”

“[…] forming a zariba, or square, to resist⟳ cavalry.”

“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.”

“[…] 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.”

“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.”

“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.”

CEFR level