Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A form of religious belief of African origin, involving sorcery and practiced in Jamaica, some other parts of the West Indies, and nearby tropical America.
- noun An object, charm, or fetish used in the practice of this belief.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun Same as
obi .
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A form of folk magic, medicine or
witchcraft originating inAfrica and practiced in parts of the Caribbean.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun (West Indies) followers of a religious system involving witchcraft and sorcery
- noun a religious belief of African origin involving witchcraft and sorcery; practiced in parts of the West Indies and tropical Americas
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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British West Indies under that of "obeah," and which sometimes lead even to human sacrifices.
Santo Domingo A Country with a Future Otto Schoenrich
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If Hinds was living in an area of the Caribbean where old folklore is alive and well, he might have thought that he was the target of an 'obeah' curse.
CaribbeanCricket.com 2009
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It is believed the items were part of an "obeah" ritual done by a criminal defendant, who hoped for supernatural intervention that his court case would be dismissed.
Stabroek News 2009
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The slave owners were encouraged to insist on conversion of the slaves to Christianity as a way of de-popularizing the obeah religion.
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They were Jamaican ghosts who could be summoned from the grave and made to do the bidding of an obeah man.
The Season of Risks Susan Hubbard 2010
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Does the inclusion of obeah as a real force in 18th century novels about slavery make them horror, or fantasy, or are the authors using an element of the spooky unknown in some sort of larger context?
Genres of Fiction, and Why They Aren’t Discrete Entities 2010
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They were Jamaican ghosts who could be summoned from the grave and made to do the bidding of an obeah man.
The Season of Risks Susan Hubbard 2010
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They were Jamaican ghosts who could be summoned from the grave and made to do the bidding of an obeah man.
The Season of Risks Susan Hubbard 2010
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Crack was still the kinder-chanting sing-song thing you avoided on the sidewalk -- in order not to break your Momma's back -- and not an extended enchanted evening of white-rocked witchcraft inculcated by a dangerously ambitious Bad Lieutenant Colonel and teenage obeah men carrying divination rods that resembled AR-15's.
Barry Michael Cooper: Michael Jackson Agonistes: An American Pop'era In Three Acts 2009
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A woman who claimed she could help another get pregnant by using obeah and took over $1.5 million in cash an jewellery to do so was yesterday jailed for one year when she appeared at the Vreed-en-Hoop Magistrate's Court.
Archive 2008-02-01 Christopher 2008
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Many were believers in obeah, a form of voodoo brought by African slaves to the Caribbean in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Terry Castle · If everybody had a Wadley: ‘Joe’ Carstairs, the ‘fastest woman on water’ · LRB 5 March 1998 Terry Castle 2020
chained_bear commented on the word obeah
Usage on Candomblé.
March 16, 2009