Word.ws English Dictionary

signare

signare noun: a mulatto French-African woman of the island of Gorée or the city of Saint-Louis in French Senegal during the 18th and 19th centuries.

Noun

signare (plural signares)

  1. (historical) A mulatto French-African woman of the island of Gorée or the city of Saint-Louis in French Senegal during the 18th and 19th centuries.
    • Signare were romanticised by witnesses who encountered them as well as in historical memory. One of the French officials of the Senegal company dedcribed them collectively as tender, charming and faithful, with a certain 'sweetness' — but also 'an insurmountable urge for love and lust'.2009, William Foster, Gender, Mastery and Slavery
    • To the farthest left, numbered "I" in Lamiral's caption, is the black female slave. Her body faces the viewer squarely, with her feet turned slightly toward the signare. From the waist up, the woman's body is bare, save for a strand of beads encircling her neck and crossing her torso under each...2016, Lisa Ze Winters, The Mulatta Concubine, page 127

Forms of signare

pluralsignares

Questions about signare

What does signare mean?
Signare means a mulatto French-African woman of the island of Gorée or the city of Saint-Louis in French Senegal during the 18th and 19th centuries.
What part of speech is signare?
Signare is a noun.
What is the plural of signare?
The plural of signare is signares.

Words near signare in the dictionary

  1. signals
  2. signals intelligence
  3. signalwave
  4. signalwoman
  5. signalwomen
  6. signare
  7. signares
  8. signaries
  9. signary
  10. signataries
  11. signatary

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: signare (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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