Word.ws English Dictionary

assegais

assegais is the plural of assegai.

assegais is the third-person singular simple present indicative 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

Questions about assegais

What is assegais the plural of?
Assegais is the plural of assegai.

Words near assegais in the dictionary

  1. assegaai
  2. assegaais
  3. assegai
  4. assegaied
  5. assegaiing
  6. assegais
  7. assegay
  8. assegays
  9. Asselar Man
  10. asselbornite
  11. Asselby

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: assegais (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: “assegais.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/assegais. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.