obeah
nounEtymology
Uncertain; apparently from a Caribbean creole, probably ultimately from a West African language. The Oxford English Dictionary points to Igbo abià (“knowledge, wisdom”), obìa (“doctor, healer”). Cognate of Aukan obiya, Saramaccan obia, and Sranan Tongo obia.
Definitions
A form of folk magic, medicine or witchcraft originating in Africa and practised in parts…
A form of folk magic, medicine or witchcraft originating in Africa and practised in parts of the Caribbean.
- Although lacking a self-perpetuating institutional structure, Obeah was a crucial element of Afro-Caribbean religions everywhere from Suriname's Maroon societies (communities of runaway slaves) to the Leeward Islands' slave societies.
A magician or witch doctor of the magic craft.
- […] but he went down to death, with dusky dreams of African shadow-catchers and Obeahs hunting him.
- A Jamaican Christian came to me for counseling. […] I asked him if he had been charmed as a child by an Obeah. Obeahs are the magicians of the Carribean^([sic]) islands.
- Although Adair suspected that obeahs often employed poisons, he emphasized that the diseases induced by obeahs resulted from "depraved imagination, or a powerful excitement or depression of the mental faculties."
A spell performed in the practice of the magic craft
A spell performed in the practice of the magic craft; an item associated with such a spell.
- Mr. M. J. Walhouse then read a paper on "Some Indian Obeahs", and exhibited some photos of Kurumbars, and a piece of the bone of an elk and an iron cock's spur, with which a man had been murdered, both of which had been regarded as Obeahs.
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To bewitch using this kind of folk magic.
The neighborhood
Derived
Vish — recursive loop
No curated loop yet for obeah. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.
sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA