Word.ws English Dictionary

assagay

assagay is the archaic form of assegai.

Meaning of assegai

Noun

assegai (plural assegais)

  1. A slim hardwood spear or javelin with an iron tip, especially those used by Bantu peoples of Southern Africa.
    • But now the Moormen, stalking o'er the strand / to guard the wat'ery stores the strangers need; / this, targe on arm and assegai in hand, / that, with his bended bow, and venom'd reed[.]1880, Richard Francis Burton, Os Lusíadas, volume I, page 33
  2. The tree species Curtisia dentata, the wood of which is traditionally used to make assegais.
    • In the clearing, built around the base of an assegai tree, stood a hut, plastered in cow dung.2019, Marlon James, Black Leopard, Red Wolf, Hamish Hamilton, page 236

See all 3 meanings of assegai

Forms of assagay

Noun
pluralassagays
Verb
third-person singular presentassagays
present participleassagaying
past participleassagayed
pastassagayed

Questions about assagay

What is assagay the archaic form of?
Assagay is the archaic form of assegai.

Words near assagay in the dictionary

  1. assagaie
  2. assagaied
  3. assagaies
  4. assagaiing
  5. assagais
  6. assagay
  7. assagayed
  8. assagaying
  9. assagays
  10. assage
  11. assahy

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: assagay (page history and authors); assegai (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “assagay.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/assagay. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.