Word.ws English Dictionary

dervishes

dervishes is the plural of dervish.

Meaning of dervish

Noun

dervish (plural dervishes)

  1. (historical) A citizen or inhabitant of Darawiish (circa 1895–1920 C.E.), an anti-colonial polity in modern Somalia headed by Sufis.
    Synonyms:
    fakir
  2. (historical) One of the followers of Muhammad Ahmad, the Mahdi of the Sudan, in the 1880s.
    Synonyms:
    fakir
  3. (broadly) Any irregular guerrilla fighter resembling the Sudanese Mahdi in equipment, uniform, tactics, etc.
    • The Hejaz war, meanwhile, would be one of dervishes against regular troops.1926, T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, New York: Anchor, published 1991, page 104
    Synonyms:
    fakir

See all 5 meanings of dervish

Noun capitalized: Dervishes

Dervishes

  1. (plural) plural of Dervish

Phrases with dervishes

Questions about dervishes

What is dervishes the plural of?
Dervishes is the plural of dervish.
What part of speech is dervishes?
Dervishes is a noun.

Words near dervishes in the dictionary

  1. dervis
  2. dervise
  3. dervises
  4. dervish
  5. Dervish state
  6. dervishes
  7. dervishhood
  8. dervishism
  9. dervishization
  10. dervishlike
  11. Dervock

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dervishes (page history and authors); Dervishes (page history and authors); dervish (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: “dervishes.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dervishes. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.