Word.ws English Dictionary

sjambok

/ˈʃæmbɒk/

sjambok noun: a stout whip, especially made of rhinoceros or hippopotamus hide.

sjambok: a stout whip, especially made of rhinoceros or hippopotamus hide
Image: OwenX, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

sjambok (plural sjamboks)

  1. (South Africa) A stout whip, especially made of rhinoceros or hippopotamus hide.
    • He learnt that he was a slave, in spite of all the petty airs he might assume, a slave shackled to a yoke, to be scolded when he lagged, flogged when he rebelled with the sjambok of the modern driver, Threat of the Sack.1938, Xavier Herbert, chapter II, in Capricornia, pages 25–6
    • Foppl stood holding a sjambok or cattle whip of giraffe hide, tapping the handle against his leg in a steady, syncopated figure.1963, Thomas Pynchon, V.

Verb

sjambok (third-person singular simple present sjamboks, present participle sjambokking, simple past and past participle sjambokked)

  1. (transitive) To whip with a sjambok; to horsewhip.

Examples of sjambok in a sentence

  • Several accusations had been brought in against her and every time she'd denied them she had been beaten with a sjambok.1979, André Brink, A Dry White Season, Vintage, published 1998, page 113:
  • If dialogue is ever to have a chance, South Africans must find a way to turn away from violence in all its forms — the brutal violence of the sjambok1989, United States Congress Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Subcommittee on African Affairs, United States Policy Toward South...
  • The locals were armed with sticks, sjamboks and other weapons.2006 May 13/14, Weekend Argus, page 1:

Forms of sjambok

Noun
pluralsjamboks
alternative formsambock
alternative formsambok
alternative formshambock
alternative formshambok
alternative formshambuck
alternative formsjambock
alternative formsjamboke
Verb
third-person singular presentsjamboks
present participlesjambokking
past participlesjambokked
pastsjambokked

Origin of sjambok

From Afrikaans sjambok, from Dutch sjambok, from Javanese cambuk, and as borrowed in Malay: modern Indonesian and Malay, ultimately from Persian چابک (čâbok). Originally spelt in the colonial Dutch transliteration tscamboek. The term was imported by VOC officials, Dutch merchants, the Maardijkers (Maluku (Moluccan) freemen and burghers), and Inlanders (Javanese and other modern Indonesian slaves and political exiles expelled to Dutch South Africa). Doublet of chabuk.

Questions about sjambok

What does sjambok mean?
Sjambok means a stout whip, especially made of rhinoceros or hippopotamus hide.
How do you use sjambok in a sentence?
Several accusations had been brought in against her and every time she'd denied them she had been beaten with a sjambok.
What part of speech is sjambok?
Sjambok can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce sjambok?
Sjambok is pronounced /ˈʃæmbɒk/.
What is the plural of sjambok?
The plural of sjambok is sjamboks.

Words near sjambok in the dictionary

  1. SJ
  2. sjambock
  3. sjambocked
  4. sjambocking
  5. sjambocks
  6. sjambok
  7. sjamboke
  8. sjamboked
  9. sjambokes
  10. sjamboking
  11. sjambokked

Source and license

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