kirta

English

Etymology

From or related to Kanuri kə́rtá (“floating island”).

Noun

kirta (plural kirtas)

1. A floating island on Lake Chad.
   • 1983, Andre Iltis, Jacques Lemoalle, The Aquatic Vegetation of Lake Chad, in Lake Chad: Ecology and Productivity of a Shallow Tropical Ecosystem (edited by Cannouze, Durand and Leveque):

     The kirtas were very numerous [...] until 1967 [...] These islands disappeared fairly quickly when the average level of the lake decreased below 282 m.

   • 2004, Caterine Batello, Marzio Marzot, Adamou Touré, Peter Kenmore, The Future is an Ancient Lake:

     From up there [satellites], the immense masses of vegetation that you see seem like solid ground, but instead they are all kirta, the floating islands.

   • 2004, Chet A. Van Duzer, Floating Islands: A Global Bibliography : with an Edition and Translation of G.C. Munz's Exercitatio Academica de Insulis Natantibus (1711):

     ... kirtas or floating islands of aquatic vegetation, usually of Papyrus or Phragmites, but also sometimes of Vossia cuspidata, which can break free from vegetation fringing islands in Lake Chad  […]