Word.ws English Dictionary

negus

/ˈniːɡəs/

negus noun: a drink made of wine, often port, mixed with hot water, oranges or lemons, spices and sugar.

Noun (1)

negus (countable and uncountable, plural neguses)

  1. A drink made of wine, often port, mixed with hot water, oranges or lemons, spices and sugar.
    • And when he got home he had a glass of hot negus in his wife's sitting-room, and read the last number of the “Little Dorrit” of the day with great inward satisfaction.1857, Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers. […], copyright edition, volume II, Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, published 1859, →OCLC, page 219
    • Esther began […] to cry. But when the fire had been lit specially to warm her chilled limbs and Adela had plied her with hot negus she began to feel rather a heroine.1929, M. Barnard Eldershaw, chapter VII, in A House is Built, section VI

Noun (2)

negus (plural neguses)

  1. (historical) A ruler of Abyssinia (Ethiopia), or of a province of Ethiopia; specifically, the king of Ethiopia before 1974.
    • Sir, the Negus of Ethiopia is here in person; and this is the day of our death, doe what you can to saue your selfe, for my part I meane here to die1614 Samuel Purchas, Purchas his pilgrimes. part 2 In fiue bookes, Chap. V. The Voyage of Sir FRANCIS ALVAREZ, a Portugall Priest, made vnto the Court of PRETE IANNI, the great Christian Emperour of...
    • In the Abyssinian Language a King is call'd Negus. Their Monarch they stile Negus Negasta, which is as much as to say, King of Kings.1739, John Campbell, The Travels and Adventures of Edward Brown, page 292

Proper noun capitalized: Negus

Negus

  1. An English surname of unknown derivation.

Noun (3) capitalized: Negus

Negus (plural Neguses)

  1. (alternative) Alternative form of negus (“Ethiopian ruler”).

negus meaning in Hindi, Bengali, Arabic and Persian

negus in Hindi

king of Abyssinia (Ethiopia)
नजाशी najāśī

negus in Bengali

king of Abyssinia (Ethiopia)
নাজাশি najaśi

negus in Arabic

king of Abyssinia (Ethiopia)
نَجَاشِيّ najāšiyy

negus in Persian

king of Abyssinia (Ethiopia)
نجاشی najâši

Examples of negus in a sentence

  • ‘I could sure use a cup of negus and maybe some hot soup,’ he sniffs.1982, TC Boyle, Water Music, Penguin, published 2006, page 258:
  • It was a Syrian merchant, Frumentius, who is credited with converting Ezana, the Negus (king or emperor) of the powerful northern Ethiopian state of Aksum.2009, Diarmaid MacCulloch, A History of Christianity, Penguin, published 2010, page 240:

Forms of negus

pluralneguses
pluralNeguses

Origin of negus

Named after Colonel Francis Negus (1670–1732), its creator.

Fitst use appears c. the 1590s, borrowed from Amharic ንጉሥ (nəguś, “king, ruler”), itself a loan from Ge'ez ንጉሥ (nəguś, “king, ruler”), from the verb ነግሠ (nägśä, “rule”).

Questions about negus

What does negus mean?
Negus means a drink made of wine, often port, mixed with hot water, oranges or lemons, spices and sugar.
What is negus in Hindi?
Negus in Hindi is नजाशी (najāśī). See Negus meaning in Hindi.
How do you use negus in a sentence?
‘I could sure use a cup of negus and maybe some hot soup,’ he sniffs.
What part of speech is negus?
Negus can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce negus?
Negus is pronounced /ˈniːɡəs/.
What is the plural of negus?
The plural of negus is neguses.

Words near negus in the dictionary

  1. Negru
  2. negs
  3. negundo
  4. negundos
  5. negundoside
  6. negus
  7. neguses
  8. NEH
  9. Neh.
  10. Neha
  11. nehallewars

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: negus (page history and authors); Negus (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-negus.wav.

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