"sowei" meaning in All languages combined

See sowei on Wiktionary

Noun [English]

Forms: soweis [plural]
Head templates: {{en-noun}} sowei (plural soweis)
  1. A guardian spirit of a Sande society of the Mende, who is represented by a special helmet-like mask.
    Sense id: en-sowei-en-noun--4KXrTC6 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 48 52
  2. (by extension) A woman who represents a sowei by wearing a sowei mask. Tags: broadly
    Sense id: en-sowei-en-noun-IPtZ6ACD Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 48 52

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for sowei meaning in All languages combined (3.3kB)

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "soweis",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "sowei (plural soweis)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "_dis": "48 52",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1980, Ethnologische Zeitschrift Zurich, page 123",
          "text": "Snakes are quite frequently depicted on sowei masks and it is possible that they are related to Sande lore or ritual practices, since snakes are found in rivers where the Sande spirit lives and where a number of important ceremonies take place.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2012, L. Day, Gender and Power in Sierra Leone: Women Chiefs of the Last Two Centuries",
          "text": "Like the men's society, the corporate consciousness of women and their respected place in the political body is represented by a masked spirit. This sowei (masker), like all the officials of the society, represents the corporate body of women and retains the authority to levy fines and punish women and men or the community as a whole. The ndoli Jowei (dancing sowei) is a masker whose figure is completely covered with black raffia, topped by the sowei mask.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2013, Frances Harding, The Performance Arts in Africa: A Reader, page 140",
          "text": "Each Sande group is led by one or more Soweisia who have custody of the sande 'medicine' and the sowei masks.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2014, Paul Basu, Wayne Modest, Museums, Heritage and International Development, page 74",
          "text": "Indeed, so ubiquitous are these 'sowei masks' that they form a veritable Sierra Leonean 'object diaspora' and have become iconic of the region—a sowei mask, for example, appeared on one of the first series of postage stamps issued by the newly independent Sierra Leone in 1961.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A guardian spirit of a Sande society of the Mende, who is represented by a special helmet-like mask."
      ],
      "id": "en-sowei-en-noun--4KXrTC6",
      "links": [
        [
          "guardian",
          "guardian"
        ],
        [
          "spirit",
          "spirit"
        ],
        [
          "Sande",
          "Sande"
        ],
        [
          "Mende",
          "Mende"
        ],
        [
          "helmet",
          "helmet"
        ],
        [
          "mask",
          "mask"
        ]
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "_dis": "48 52",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2012, L. Day, Gender and Power in Sierra Leone: Women Chiefs of the Last Two Centuries",
          "text": "Like the men's society, the corporate consciousness of women and their respected place in the political body is represented by a masked spirit. This sowei (masker), like all the officials of the society, represents the corporate body of women and retains the authority to levy fines and punish women and men or the community as a whole. The ndoli Jowei (dancing sowei) is a masker whose figure is completely covered with black raffia, topped by the sowei mask.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A woman who represents a sowei by wearing a sowei mask."
      ],
      "id": "en-sowei-en-noun-IPtZ6ACD",
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(by extension) A woman who represents a sowei by wearing a sowei mask."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "broadly"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "sowei"
}
{
  "categories": [
    "English countable nouns",
    "English entries with incorrect language header",
    "English lemmas",
    "English nouns"
  ],
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "soweis",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "sowei (plural soweis)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English terms with quotations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1980, Ethnologische Zeitschrift Zurich, page 123",
          "text": "Snakes are quite frequently depicted on sowei masks and it is possible that they are related to Sande lore or ritual practices, since snakes are found in rivers where the Sande spirit lives and where a number of important ceremonies take place.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2012, L. Day, Gender and Power in Sierra Leone: Women Chiefs of the Last Two Centuries",
          "text": "Like the men's society, the corporate consciousness of women and their respected place in the political body is represented by a masked spirit. This sowei (masker), like all the officials of the society, represents the corporate body of women and retains the authority to levy fines and punish women and men or the community as a whole. The ndoli Jowei (dancing sowei) is a masker whose figure is completely covered with black raffia, topped by the sowei mask.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2013, Frances Harding, The Performance Arts in Africa: A Reader, page 140",
          "text": "Each Sande group is led by one or more Soweisia who have custody of the sande 'medicine' and the sowei masks.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2014, Paul Basu, Wayne Modest, Museums, Heritage and International Development, page 74",
          "text": "Indeed, so ubiquitous are these 'sowei masks' that they form a veritable Sierra Leonean 'object diaspora' and have become iconic of the region—a sowei mask, for example, appeared on one of the first series of postage stamps issued by the newly independent Sierra Leone in 1961.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A guardian spirit of a Sande society of the Mende, who is represented by a special helmet-like mask."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "guardian",
          "guardian"
        ],
        [
          "spirit",
          "spirit"
        ],
        [
          "Sande",
          "Sande"
        ],
        [
          "Mende",
          "Mende"
        ],
        [
          "helmet",
          "helmet"
        ],
        [
          "mask",
          "mask"
        ]
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [
        "English terms with quotations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2012, L. Day, Gender and Power in Sierra Leone: Women Chiefs of the Last Two Centuries",
          "text": "Like the men's society, the corporate consciousness of women and their respected place in the political body is represented by a masked spirit. This sowei (masker), like all the officials of the society, represents the corporate body of women and retains the authority to levy fines and punish women and men or the community as a whole. The ndoli Jowei (dancing sowei) is a masker whose figure is completely covered with black raffia, topped by the sowei mask.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A woman who represents a sowei by wearing a sowei mask."
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(by extension) A woman who represents a sowei by wearing a sowei mask."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "broadly"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "sowei"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-06-21 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-06-06 using wiktextract (6c02f21 and 0136956). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.