Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A light spear or lance used by Bantu peoples of southern Africa.
- noun A tall evergreen tree (Curtisia dentata) of southern Africa, having durable wood used for making weapons, furniture, and other wooden products, and bark that is used in traditional medicine.
from The Century Dictionary.
- See
assagai .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun Same as
assagai .
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A slim hardwood
spear orjavelin with an iron tip, especially those used byBantu peoples of Southern Africa. - noun The tree species Curtisia dentata, because its wood is traditionally used to made assegais.
- verb To
spear with an assegai.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun the slender spear of the Bantu-speaking people of Africa
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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Another example, the Zulu warriors that fought the British over in Africa used the assegai, which is really just a fancy spear and couldn't make any Spartan jaws drop in awe, maybe in laughter or curiosity, but certainly not in awe.
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Bushman (who does not desire to kill them!) and the slender "assegai" of the Bechuana, the lion has little or no fear of man.
Popular Adventure Tales Mayne Reid 1850
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Bushman (who does not desire to kill them!) and the slender "assegai" of the Bechuana, the lion has little or no fear of man.
The Bush Boys History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family Mayne Reid 1850
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Ki-Gor landed lightly on his feet and instantly struck with the assegai blade in his right hand.
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Silently, he offered the butt end of his assegai for Robert to hold, and the oddly assorted pair moved slowly down the path.
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The sergeant, in the act of climbing over the tailboard, let out a hell of a shriek; I glimpsed his face, red and staring, and his arm flung out to point, and then his eyes stared horribly, and he slumped down into the dust, with a throwing assegai between his shoulders, his limbs thrashing wildly.
Watershed 2010
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I came dizzily to my feet, to stare at the empty ravine, with a great black cloud billowing in the air above it, a few shreds of rope and timber dangling from the far lip, and on this side, lying in the dust, a single assegai.
Watershed 2010
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Ki-Gor reached down, shook Helene's shoulder roughly, and seized the blade of the assegai.
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Suddenly Ki-Gor was beside him, hacking and stabbing with the assegai.
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His spine prickling, Ki-Gor stepped back a pace and shifted his grip on the assegai blade.
knitandpurl commented on the word assegai
"Here-elsewhere: with deadly violence, a mixture of countries traveled, pieces of a life torn to shreds, a body scraped off the ground, appearance peculiar and untidy, blood stains; sweat, strife, toil: incursion of rebel assegais where the mountain rises up in fortification."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 6 of the Dalkey Archive paperback
September 13, 2011