# zeriba
## English
### Alternative forms

* zareba (particularly in figurative uses)
* seriba, sariba
* zerybeh
* zereba, zareeba, zerriba

### Etymology

Borrowed from Arabic زَرِيبَة (zarība, “pen, cattle pen”).

### Noun

zeriba (plural zeribas)
* (historical) A fence of the type once commonly improvised in northeastern Africa from thornbushes.
** 1849, Ferdinand Werne, chapter 5, in Charles William O’Reilly, transl., Expedition to Discover the Sources of the White Nile‎, volume II, London: Richard Bentley, page 112:On the left shore two neat farmyards shew themselves in a shining seriba of reeds, the stalks of which are connected very regularly with each other, but perhaps only afford resistance to tame animals.
** 1895, A. H. Keane, Africa, Volume I, North Africa, (Stanford’s Compendium of Geography and Travel), London: Edward Stanford, Chapter 5, p. 245, footnote 1,
    In Arabic zeriba means any kind of rough and ready fenced enclosure; hence the expression “zeriba country” applied by some geographers to the northern slope of the Nile-Congo divide, where the Arab traders and slave-hunters had founded numerous palisaded stations long before the establishment of the Egyptian administration in that region.
* (by extension) An improvised stockade, particularly those similarly located and constructed.
** 1884 March 11, The Times, page 5:The Black Watch (Royal Highlanders) advanced this morning to Baker Pasha’s zariba.
** 1912, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World […], London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC:I clutched at a gun - my pockets were full of cartridges - and, parting the thorn bushes at the gate of our zareba, quickly slipped out.
* (by extension) A camp of troops employing such an enclosure.
** 1887 April 9, The Times, page 5:[…] forming a zariba, or square, to resist cavalry.
* (by extension) Any wild and barbed barrier, evocative of a briar or thorn patch.
** 1910 May 28, P. G. Wodehouse, “Deep Waters”, in Collier’s, volume 45, page 18:Once you had passed the initial zareba of fruit stands, souvenir stands, ice-cream stands, and the lair of the enthusiast whose aim in life it was to sell you picture postal-cards, and had won through to the long walk where the seats were, you were practically alone with Nature.
** 1940, Graham Greene, chapter 2, in The Power and the Glory, London: Vintage, published 2001:[…] a small withered soldier sat by the prison door with a gun between his knees and the shadows of the palms pointed at him like a zareba of sabres.
** 1944, Miles Burton, chapter 5, in The Three Corpse Trick‎, London: Collins:The hovel stood in the centre of what had once been a vegetable garden, but was now a patch of rank weeds. Surrounding this, almost like a zareba, was an irregular ring of gorse and brambles, an unclaimed vestige of the original common.
** 1961, P. G. Wodehouse, chapter 7, in Ice in the Bedroom, New York: Simon & Schuster, page 52:Owing to his obiter dicta having to be filtered through a zareba of white hair, it was not always easy to catch exactly what Mr. Cornelius said.

### Verb

zeriba (third-person singular simple present zeribas, present participle zeribaing, simple past and past participle zeribaed)
* To erect or take refuge within a zeriba.
** 1885 July, R. F. T. Gascoigne, “To Within a Mile of Khartoum”, in The Nineteenth Century, number 101, page 89:[…] the Brigadier ordered the force to zereba on the best position that was near.
** 1911, Somaliland‎, 11th edition, volume 25, Encyclopædia Britannica, page 382:On the 2nd of June a small force, zeribaed under Captain Malcolm McNeill, was attacked by the mullah’s followers but repulsed after desperate fighting.

### Further reading

* Zeriba in the 1920 edition of Encyclopedia Americana.

### Anagrams

* braize

## Italian
### Etymology

Borrowed from Arabic زَرِيبَة (zarība, “pen, cattle pen”).

### Noun

zeriba f (plural zeribe)
* zeriba (African type of fence)