marabout

English edit

marabout (sense 2)

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marabout

From French marabout, from Portuguese maraboto, marabuto, from Moroccan Arabic مْرَابِط (mrabeṭ) (standard Arabic مُرَابِط (murābiṭ, “soldier stationed in fortified outpost”)).

marabout (plural marabouts)

(Islam) A Muslim holy man or mystic, especially in parts of North Africa. [from 17th c.]
- 1977, Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace, New York: Review Books, published 2006, page 38:
  one of their principal targets was the marabouts – or holy men and leaders of mystic orders – whom they accused both of corrupting the faith by their espousal of mysticism and of being the ‘domestic animals of colonialism’.
The tomb or shrine of such a person. [from 19th c.]
- 2023 July 4, Paula Cocozza, “I was lost in the desert for nine and a half days – and sustained myself with raw bats and urine”, in The Guardian‎^[1], →ISSN:
  Climbing one on his second day lost, Prosperi spotted a disturbance to the view. “I was convinced it was somebody’s home or a holy man’s shrine.” But the shrine, or marabout, was empty. The only holy man was in a sarcophagus.
Alternative form of marabou (“thin fabric made from silk”)
- 1852, William Makepeace Thackeray, Men's Wives‎^[2], New York: D. Appleton & Company, page 122:
  Wherever she went she had, if not the finest, at any rate the most showy gown in the room; her ornaments were the biggest; her hats, toques, berets, marabouts, and other fallals, always the most conspicuous.