Word.ws English Dictionary

sahwa

sahwa noun: a series of political purges in the late 15th and 16th centuries, during which sarim scholars were persecuted by political rivals.

Noun

sahwa pl (plural only)

  1. (historical, plural, plural-only) A series of political purges in the late 15th and 16th centuries, during which sarim scholars were persecuted by political rivals.
    • Executed during the sahwa of 1722.1999, Keith L. Pratt, Richard Rutt, James Hoare, Korea: A Historical and Cultural Dictionary, page 217
    • The origins of factionalism in Yi Korea can probably be traced back to the sahwa (literati purges).2020, Ching Young Choe, The Rule of the Taewŏnʾgun, 1864-1873, page 205

Origin of sahwa

From Korean 사화 (sahwa).

Questions about sahwa

What does sahwa mean?
Sahwa means a series of political purges in the late 15th and 16th centuries, during which sarim scholars were persecuted by political rivals.
What part of speech is sahwa?
Sahwa is a noun.

Words near sahwa in the dictionary

  1. Sahul
  2. Sahul brush cuckoo
  3. Sahul brush cuckoos
  4. sahur
  5. Sahus
  6. sahwa
  7. Sahą́ı̨́ʔą
  8. sai
  9. Sai Gon
  10. sai kang warrior
  11. sai kang warriors

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sahwa (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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