See obeah in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
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"text": "Obeah—a set of hybrid or creolized beliefs dependent on ritual invocation, fetishes, and charms—incorporates two very distinct categories of practice. The first involves \"the casting of spells for various purposes, both good and evil: protecting oneself, property, family, or loved ones; harming real or perceived enemies; and bringing fortune in love, employment, personal or business pursuits\"[…]. The second incorporates traditional African-derived healing practices based on the application of considerable knowledge of herbal and animal medicinal properties.",
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"text": "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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"ref": "1829 October 31, “S.” [pseudonym], “Obeah”, in The New Scots Magazine, volume II, number XII, Edinburgh: Published by R. Buchanan, No. 26, George Street [...], published 1830, →OCLC, page 248:",
"text": "Sometimes an egg is boiled hard, and laid in the middle of the road, surrounded by a circle of plantane bark; at others, pieces of hair, cats' teeth, cocks' feathers, and bits of glass, broken amber, and snakes' skins, are placed at the person's door; but oftener buried so as to be concealed from sight. Whoever touches an obeah of this kind, is certain to bring all the mischief intended for the obeahed person, upon his own head; and the consequence is, very few Negroes, if any, venture to remove the charm, or even to come near it. A lock of the obeahed person's hair is almost indispensably necessary, […]",
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"ref": "1834, Mattew Gregory Lewis, Journal of a West India Proprietor, Kept during a Residence in the Island of Jamaica, London: John Murray, Albemarle Street, →OCLC, pages 146–147:",
"text": "[I]f any negro from that time forward should be proved to have accused another of Obeahing him or of telling another that he had been Obeahed, he should forfeit his share of the next present of salt-fish, which I meant soon to distribute among the slaves, and should never receive any favour from me in future; […]",
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"ref": "1903, Charles Augustus Stoddard, quoting Henry Hesketh Bell, Cruising Among the Caribbees: Summer Days in Winter Months, rev. and enl. edition, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner's Sons, →OCLC, page 88:",
"text": "A negro takes a dislike to a negro or negroes, either upon the same estate with himself or upon another; he goes to the Obeah woman and tells her that he will give money or something else as payment if she will Obeah such and such persons. The Obeah woman then goes to those people, and tells them she has Obeahed them. Slow poison is at times secretly administered, but in by far the greater number of cases the mind only is affected; the imagination becomes more and more alarmed, the spirits sink, lassitude and loss of appetite ensue, and death ends the drama.",
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"ref": "1906 December – 1907 May, Isabella S. Abel, “The Obeah-man”, in The Windsor Magazine: An Illustrated Monthly for Men and Women, volume XXV, London: Ward, Lock & Co., Limited Warwick House, Salisbury Square, E.C., published 1907, OCLC 224679211, page 392",
"text": "A poor old woman who thinks she has been Obeahed lies ill in an isolated hut on the short cut to New Castle. I discovered her while out shooting, and promised to send her medical aid. Her case is pressing."
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},
{
"form": "obeahed",
"tags": [
"participle",
"past"
]
},
{
"form": "obeahed",
"tags": [
"past"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {},
"expansion": "obeah (third-person singular simple present obeahs, present participle obeahing, simple past and past participle obeahed)",
"name": "en-verb"
}
],
"hyphenation": [
"o‧be‧ah"
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "verb",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"English terms with quotations",
"English transitive verbs"
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1829 October 31, “S.” [pseudonym], “Obeah”, in The New Scots Magazine, volume II, number XII, Edinburgh: Published by R. Buchanan, No. 26, George Street [...], published 1830, →OCLC, page 248:",
"text": "Sometimes an egg is boiled hard, and laid in the middle of the road, surrounded by a circle of plantane bark; at others, pieces of hair, cats' teeth, cocks' feathers, and bits of glass, broken amber, and snakes' skins, are placed at the person's door; but oftener buried so as to be concealed from sight. Whoever touches an obeah of this kind, is certain to bring all the mischief intended for the obeahed person, upon his own head; and the consequence is, very few Negroes, if any, venture to remove the charm, or even to come near it. A lock of the obeahed person's hair is almost indispensably necessary, […]",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1834, Mattew Gregory Lewis, Journal of a West India Proprietor, Kept during a Residence in the Island of Jamaica, London: John Murray, Albemarle Street, →OCLC, pages 146–147:",
"text": "[I]f any negro from that time forward should be proved to have accused another of Obeahing him or of telling another that he had been Obeahed, he should forfeit his share of the next present of salt-fish, which I meant soon to distribute among the slaves, and should never receive any favour from me in future; […]",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1903, Charles Augustus Stoddard, quoting Henry Hesketh Bell, Cruising Among the Caribbees: Summer Days in Winter Months, rev. and enl. edition, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner's Sons, →OCLC, page 88:",
"text": "A negro takes a dislike to a negro or negroes, either upon the same estate with himself or upon another; he goes to the Obeah woman and tells her that he will give money or something else as payment if she will Obeah such and such persons. The Obeah woman then goes to those people, and tells them she has Obeahed them. Slow poison is at times secretly administered, but in by far the greater number of cases the mind only is affected; the imagination becomes more and more alarmed, the spirits sink, lassitude and loss of appetite ensue, and death ends the drama.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1906 December – 1907 May, Isabella S. Abel, “The Obeah-man”, in The Windsor Magazine: An Illustrated Monthly for Men and Women, volume XXV, London: Ward, Lock & Co., Limited Warwick House, Salisbury Square, E.C., published 1907, OCLC 224679211, page 392",
"text": "A poor old woman who thinks she has been Obeahed lies ill in an isolated hut on the short cut to New Castle. I discovered her while out shooting, and promised to send her medical aid. Her case is pressing."
}
],
"glosses": [
"To bewitch using this kind of folk magic."
],
"links": [
[
"bewitch",
"bewitch"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(transitive) To bewitch using this kind of folk magic."
],
"tags": [
"transitive"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"ipa": "/ˈəʊbɪə/",
"tags": [
"Received-Pronunciation"
]
},
{
"audio": "LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-obeah.wav",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/a/ac/LL-Q1860_%28eng%29-Vealhurl-obeah.wav/LL-Q1860_%28eng%29-Vealhurl-obeah.wav.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/a/ac/LL-Q1860_%28eng%29-Vealhurl-obeah.wav/LL-Q1860_%28eng%29-Vealhurl-obeah.wav.ogg"
},
{
"ipa": "/ˈobia/",
"tags": [
"Caribbean"
]
}
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "obe"
},
{
"word": "obea"
},
{
"word": "obi"
},
{
"word": "obia"
},
{
"word": "oby"
}
],
"wikipedia": [
"Morant Bay",
"Oxford English Dictionary",
"obeah"
],
"word": "obeah"
}
Download raw JSONL data for obeah meaning in English (11.6kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-11-28 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-11-21 using wiktextract (65a6e81 and 0dbea76). 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.