Word.ws English Dictionary

xeer

xeer noun: the traditional legal system of Somalia, believed to predate Islam, in which elders serve as mediators and people are responsible for the actions of their families.

Noun

xeer (uncountable)

  1. The traditional legal system of Somalia, believed to predate Islam, in which elders serve as mediators and people are responsible for the actions of their families.
    • It arranges for settlement of collective debts, discusses xeer dealings with central authorities, maintains the group wells, and protects grazing areas.1977, David D Laitin, Politics, language, and thought: the Somali experience
    • In rural areas, there is still confusion between xeer and shari'a.2005, Walter Dostal, Wolfgang Kraus, Shattering tradition: custom, law and the individual in the Muslim Mediterranean

Questions about xeer

What does xeer mean?
Xeer means the traditional legal system of Somalia, believed to predate Islam, in which elders serve as mediators and people are responsible for the actions of their families.
What part of speech is xeer?
Xeer is a noun.

Words near xeer in the dictionary

  1. xebeque
  2. xebeques
  3. Xebero
  4. Xed
  5. Xed out
  6. xeer
  7. xeet
  8. xeeted
  9. xeeting
  10. xeets
  11. xeir

Source and license

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