marabout

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

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈmaɹəbuːt/

marabout (plural marabouts)

1. (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’.

2. 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, →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.

3. Alternative form of marabou (“thin fabric made from silk”)
   • 1852, William Makepeace Thackeray, Men's Wives‎, 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.

• maraboutic
• maraboutism

• marabou

• tamboura

• marabou

From Arabic مُرَابِط (murābiṭ).

• IPA^(key): /ma.ʁa.bu/

• Audio

  (file)

marabout m (plural marabouts)

1. (religion) marabout
2. (zoology) marabou, stork of the Leptoptilos genus

• marabouter
• maraboutage
• maraboutisme
• maraboutiste

• → Catalan: marabú
• → English: marabout
• → Spanish: marabú

• “marabout”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.