Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Moorish |
MoorishAdjective1. Relating to or characteristic of the Moors; "Moorish architecture". Noun1. A style of architecture common in Spain from the 13th to 16th centuries; characterized by the horseshoe (Moorish) arch. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "Moorish" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1532. (references) |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
- A type of wetland; See bog.
- Person of Moorish (North African) ethnicity; see Moors.
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Moor."
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
The Moors is the ancient name for the indigenous nomadic Berber people in North Africa, who converted to Islam in the 7th century. The name corresponds to the kingdom of the Mauri, Mauretania, which its last king Bocchus II willed to Octavian in 33 BCE, after which it became the Roman province of Mauretania. Mauretania lay in present day Morocco and Western Algeria. The name of Mauri was applied by the Romans to all non-romanized natives of North Africa still ruled by their own chiefs, until the 3rd century AD.Since the Mauri were a dark-skinned people in comparison to Europeans, 'Moor' came to be applied indiscriminately by English speakers to blacks, muslims, saracens, Persians or Indians. Shakespeare's Othello was 'the Moor of Venice.' During the 17th century, Africans were sometimes distinguished from others as blackamoors.
In 711 AD, some Moors invaded Visigoth Christian Spain. Under their leader Tariq ibn-Ziyad they brought most of Spain under Islamic rule in an eight-year campaign. They attempted to move northeast across the Pyrenees Mountains but were defeated by the Frank Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours in 732. The Moors ruled in Spain, except for small areas in the northwest and largely Basque regions in the Pyrenees, and in North Africa for several decades. The Moorish state suffered civil conflict in the 750s.
The country then broke up into a number of mostly Islamic fiefdoms, which were consolidated under the Caliphate of Cordoba. Christian states based in the north and west slowly extended their power over Spain. Galicia, León, Navarre, Aragon, Catalonia or Marca Hispanica, and eventually Castile became Christian in the next several centuries. This period is known for the tolerant acceptance of Christians, Muslims and Jews living in the same territories. Although, the Caliphate of Córdoba collapsed in 1031 and the Islamic territory in Spain came to be ruled by North African Moors.
In 1212 a coalition of Christian kings under the leadership of Alfonso VIII of Castile drove the muslims from Central Spain. However the Moorish Kingdom of Granada thrived for three more centuries. This kingdom is known in modern time for architectural gems such as the Alhambra. On January 2, 1492, the leader of the last Muslim stronghold in Granada surrendered to armies of a recently united Christian Spain. The remaining Muslim were forced to leave Spain or convert to Christianity. These descendants of the Muslims were named moriscos. They were an important portion of the peasants in some territories, like Aragon, Valencia or Andalusia, until their systematic expulsion in the years from 1609 to 1614. Henre Lapeyre has estimated that this affected 300,000 out of a total of 8 million inhabitants at the time.
In the meantime, the tide of Islamic conquest had rolled not just westward to Spain, but also eastward, through India, the Malayan peninsula, and Indonesia, up to Mindanao, one of the major islands of an archipelago, which the Spanish had reached during their voyages westward from the New World. By 1521, the ships of Magellan had themselves reached that island archipelago, which they named the Philippines, after Philip II of Spain. On Mindanao, the Spanish also named these kris-bearing people as Moros, or 'Moors'. See Reconquista.
See also: Islamic architecture, Othello, the Moor of Venice, Blackamoor
Not to be confused with moor land.
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Moors."
Synonyms: MoorishSynonyms: Moresque (adj), Moorish architecture (n). (additional references) |
| Context | Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus). |
Marsh | Adjective: marsh, marshy; swampy, boggy, plashy, poachy, quaggy, soft; muddy, sloppy, squashy; paludal; moorish, moory; fenny. |
| Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus. | |
Crosswords: Moorish |
| English words defined with "Moorish": Andalucia, Andalusia ♦ Barbary Coast ♦ Chica, cordoba, Cordova ♦ Ferdinand I, Ferdinand the Great ♦ Mooress, Moorish architecture, Moory, Morisco, Morris-pike ♦ Rosland. (references) |
| Specialty definitions using "Moorish": Alonzo of Aguilar ♦ Bayle ♦ Cloridano, Croquemitaine ♦ Dirlos ♦ Galiana ♦ Haidee, Hamet ♦ Lara ♦ Mahoun', Mambrino's Helmet, Massamore, Mudarra ♦ Rococo Jewellery, Rogero, ♦ Sang Bleu ♦ Zel. (references) |
| Etymologies containing "Moorish": Aoudad. (references) |
| Domain | Usage | |
Movie/TV Titles | ||
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title |
Books | |
Music |
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Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Thumbnail | Description & Credit | Thumbnail | Description & Credit |
 | Zanclus canescens - Moorish Idol. Credit: The Coral Kingdom. |  | Three moorish idols - Zanclus canescens -. Credit: The Coral Kingdom. |
 | Moorish women as seen only in their homes, Algiers, Africa. Credit: Library of Congress. |  | Hammond Organ Company, business at 50 W. 57th St., New York City. Moorish room, detail. Credit: Library of Congress. |
 | Tangier - view from Constantine Hotel, showing the old Moorish harbor defenses. Credit: Library of Congress. | ||
Source: pictures compiled by the editor from various references; see picture credits. | |||
| Subject | Topic | Quote |
Economic History | Mauritania | The descendants of Beni Hassan warriors became the upper stratum of Moorish society. (references) |
Minorities | Mauritania | The acceleration of desertification during the 1970's that destroyed much of the traditional economic basis of Moorish society, and an upsurge of Arab nationalism among White Moors during the 1980's, contributed to ethnic violence precipitated by a dispute with Senegal during 1989-91; this violence entailed the expulsion or flight of many non-Moors living in the south and occupation of much of their land by Moors, including Black Moors. (references) |
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits. | ||
| "Moorish" is generally used as an adjective (general or positive) -- approximately 94.16% of the time. "Moorish" is used about 137 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Adjective (general or positive) | 94.16% | 129 | 28,132 |
| Noun (common) | 2.92% | 4 | 175,879 |
| Noun (proper) | 2.19% | 3 | 202,518 |
| Lexical Verb (base form) | 0.73% | 1 | 339,140 |
| Total | 100.00% | 137 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
Expressions using "Moorish": moorish arch ♦ moorish architecture. Additional references. | |
| Hyphenated Usage | |
Beginning with "Moorish": moorish-style. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Language | Translations for "Moorish"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
Afrikaans | Moors (Mauretanian, Moresque). (various references) | |
Albanian | mavritan. (various references) | |
Arabic | بربري (barbarian, barbaric, insensate, savage). (various references) | |
Bulgarian | мавритански (moresque). (various references) | |
Dutch | Moors (Mauretanian, Moresque). (various references) | |
Finnish | maurilainen (Moor). (various references) | |
French | maure (Moor, Moresque). (various references) | |
German | maurisch, der mauren. (various references) | |
Greek | μαυριτανικόσ. (various references) | |
Hungarian | mór (moor, moresque, saracen), szerecsen (black, blackamoor, Blacky, dark-skinned, moor, negro, saracen), ingoványos (marshy, quaggy, swampy). (various references) | |
Italian | moro (dark-haired, dark-skinned, moor), moresco. (various references) | |
Manx | reeastaneagh (rough, uncultivated, waste, wild, wild terrain), reeastagh (rough, uncultivated, waste, wild, wild terrain). (various references) | |
Pig Latin | oorishmay.(various references) | |
Portuguese | mouro (moor, saracenic), mourisco (moresque). (various references) | |
Romanian | maur (arabesque, moor, moorman, moresque). (various references) | |
Russian | мавританский (moresque). (various references) | |
Serbo-Croatian | mavarski (moresque). (various references) | |
Spanish | moro (Mauretanian, moor, Moresque), morisco (Mauretanian, moresque). (various references) | |
Swedish | morisk (moresque). (various references) | |
Turkish | fas'a ait. (various references) | |
Ukrainian | болотистий (boggy, marshy, miry, mossy, paludal, plashy, quaggy, sloughy, soggy, swampy). (various references) | |
Vietnamese | hoang (virgin). (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
Misspellings | |
"Moorish" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: Koorosh, Kourosh, majorish, Mcomish, mirvish, moalrish, Moraich, morish, morrish, Mouries, murashu, Muravshi. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
| # of Phoneme Matches | Pronunciation | Word(s) rhyming with "Moorish" (pronounced muh"rish) |
| 4 | -uh" r i sh | boorish. |
| 3 | -r i sh | bearish, garish, impoverish, marish, nightmarish, parish, perish. |
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits. | ||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "h-i-m-o-o-r-s" | |
-2 letters: homos, moors, rooms. | |
-3 letters: homo, mhos, mirs, miso, moor, moos, mors, mosh, ohms, oohs, rhos, rims, roms, room, shim, shmo, shoo, shri, sori. | |
-4 letters: him, his, ism, mho, mir, mis, moo, mor, mos, ohm, oho, ohs, oms, ooh, ors, rho, rim, rom, sim, sir, som, sri. | |
-5 letters: hi, hm, ho, is, mi, mo, oh. | |
| Words containing the letters "h-i-m-o-o-r-s" | |
+1 letter: isomorph. | |
+2 letters: heirlooms, isomorphs, micromhos, mouchoirs, rhomboids. | |
+3 letters: dimorphous, harmonious, hypocorism, isomorphic, monorchids, moonshiner, sophomoric, thrombosis. | |
+4 letters: chironomids, hemorrhoids, hippodromes, homospories, honorariums, hypocorisms, isochronism, isomorphism, isomorphous, mesomorphic, mesonephroi, mesotrophic, microphones, monitorship, monohybrids, moonshiners, mushrooming, pleochroism, resmoothing, rhizomatous, rhizotomies, rhomboideus, shortcoming, workaholism. | |
+5 letters: allomorphism, apomorphines, automorphism, chemotropism, chondriosome, chylomicrons, cologarithms, cosmographic, endomorphies, endomorphism, harmoniously, heliotropism, hemoproteins, heteronomies, homogenizers, homoiotherms, homologizers, homomorphism, hydrotropism, inharmonious, isochronisms, isomorphisms, mesomorphies, mesothoracic, micromethods, microphonics, monitorships, monochromist, monomorphism, monorchidism, moonlighters, morphologies, morphologist, nomographies, photometries, phototropism, pleochroisms, pleomorphism, polychromies, polymorphism, prothrombins, shortcomings, theobromines, tomographies, trichomonads, trichotomies, trichotomous, workaholisms, zygomorphies. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
| 1. Definition 2. Synonyms 3. Crosswords 4. Usage: Modern | 5. Usage: Commercial 6. Images: Slideshow 7. Images: Photo Album 8. Quotations: Non-fiction | 9. Usage Frequency 10. Expressions 11. Expressions: Internet 12. Translations: Modern | 13. Derivations 14. Rhymes 15. Anagrams 16. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
