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Zulu   Listen
proper noun
Zulu  n.  
1.
Any member of the tribe of Zulus; a Zulu-Kaffir. See Zulus.
2.
(Philol.) One of the most important members of the South African, or Bantu, family of languages, spoken partly in Natal and partly in Zululand, but understood, and more or less in use, over a wide territory, at least as far north as the Zambezi; called also Zulu-Kaffir.
3.
A word used in spoken communications to represent the letter Z.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Zulu" Quotes from Famous Books



... for leaders in war or protectors of the frontier. Their crests and coats of arms are but the totems of their savage predecessors, afterwards utilised by mediaeval blacksmiths as distinguishing marks for the summit of a helmet. They decorate their halls with savage trophies of the chase, like the Zulu or the Red Indian; they hang up captured arms and looted Chinese jars from the Summer Palace in their semi-civilised drawing-rooms. They love to be surrounded by grooms and gamekeepers and other ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen

... forget it lightly enough, as soon as ever I left the cabin, at the saloon table, where plate and cup fretted themselves up and down against the table frames, in the skipper's basket lounge chair wherein I read contrasted romances, East End and Zulu, on the deck where I groped from hold-by to hold-by, longing to change grey sky and green sea-trenches for sunshine and blue levels of sea and sky. The weather calmed and brightened, but the presence was unaffected. It remained to my perception eager and sanguine, no less, no more, ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps

... The Moravians, whose work we have not mentioned because it is a history in itself, had some excellent establishments, but no one had yet attempted to penetrate into the home of the Kaffirs themselves, the Zulu country, to endeavour to deal with their chieftains. This was Allen Gardiner's intention, and on his outward voyage he met with a Polish refugee named Berken, who had intended to settle in Australia, but was induced to become his companion in his explorations ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... his carpet, and the blue dome of heaven or the canvas of his waggon for his untaxed roof. But his hopes were of short duration. The poor trekker—to use the vulgar phrase—had fallen out of the frying-pan into the fire. He had fled from the "British tyrant" only to encounter the Matabele Zulu savage. A terrible feud between the Bantu tribes was then causing much violence and blood-spilling, and the Zulu chief Moselekalse, having driven the Bechuanas beyond the Limpopo, had established the kingdom of the Matabele. ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke

... Chaka, you and he have seen the same suns shine, you knew his brother Panda and his captains, and perhaps even that very Mopo who tells this tale, his servant, who slew him with the Princes. You have seen the circle of the witch-doctors and the unconquerable Zulu impis rushing to war; you have crowned their kings and shared their counsels, and with your son's blood you have expiated a statesman's error and a ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard

... his danger, began backing and circling in the same way around Rourke, as well as around the fire, until it looked as though they were performing a war dance. Round and round they went like two Hopi bucks or Zulu warriors, their faces displaying the most murderous cunning and intention to slay—only, instead of feathers and beads, they had on their negligible best. All the while Rourke was calling, "Come on, now! Get ready, now! I'll show ye, now! I'll fix ye, now! It's ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser

... the house. Perhaps Charles felt that he had rather failed in courtesy to him, for during the remainder of the morning he hardly let him out of his sight. He took him to see the stables, though Carr openly declared that he did not understand horses; he showed him his collection of Zulu weapons in the vestibule; he even started a game of billiards with him till the arrival of the doctor. I did not think Carr took his attentions in very good part, though he was too well-mannered to show it; but he looked relieved when ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley

... highest esteem. To be told that he is light- coloured, or like a white man, would be deemed a very poor compliment by a Kaffir. I have heard of one unfortunate man who was so very fair that no girl would marry him." One of the titles of the Zulu king is, "You who are black." (61. Mungo Park's 'Travels in Africa,' 4to. 1816, pp. 53, 131. Burton's statement is quoted by Schaaffhausen, 'Archiv. fur Anthropologie,' 1866, s. 163. On the Banyai, ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin

... cleverest and the most stupid, are all liable to become his faithful subjects. He can alike command the devotion of an archbishop and a South-Sea Islander, of the most immaculate maiden lady (whatever her age) and of the savage Zulu girl. From the pole to the equator, and from the equator to the further pole, there is no monarch like Love. Where he sets his foot, the rocks bloom with flowers, or the garden becomes a wilderness, according to his good- will and pleasure, and at his whisper ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard

... man is very interesting. Like most of his corps, which was recruited from the Rand, he has a position on a mine there, and must be well over forty. He had been through the Zulu war too. His squadron was with Buller all through the terrible struggle from Colenso to Ladysmith, which they were the first to enter. They were shipped off to the Cape and sent up to relieve Mafeking with Mahon. ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers

... "indiscriminately reformatory," and had a universal desire to improve everything, from the Government down to agricultural implements and preserve jars. As long as she was content to expend the surplus energy, which seemed to accumulate within her through the long eventless winters, upon the Zulu Mission, and other legitimate objects, the pastor thought it all harmless enough; although, to be sure, her enthusiasm for those naked and howling savages did at times strike him as being somewhat extravagant. But when occasionally, in her own innocent way, ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... Ama is the prefix of all the tribal names; Ama Zulu, Ama Hagger. I connect it with the ...
— HE • Andrew Lang

... sweetheart. I don't care what it is, I don't care if you're the daughter of a Zulu chief." Then, seeing her distress, he said tenderly: "Is it something ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett

... common mistake of allowing the black populace to insert the thin end of the wedge. This is a mistake too often fraught with serious results, and the Boer knows it. A native, no matter if he be Swazi, Zulu, Basuto, or any other nationality, will always take advantage where such is offered, and he will follow it up with enough persistence to warrant ultimate success. In Natal, at the present time, this mistake is very apparent, and, ...
— The Boer in Peace and War • Arthur M. Mann

... instance of an actual case of running away from a marriage, resulting in adventures which might easily become folk-tale adventures if the story were once started on its traditional life, is to be found in Shooter's Kafirs of Natal and the Zulu ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme

... coat arf an hour arterwards, while George curled his 'air, and when 'e was dressed in bracelets round 'is ankles and wrists, and a leopard-skin over his shoulder, he was as fine a Zulu as you could wish for to see. His lips was naturally thick and his nose flat, and even his eyes 'appened to be ...
— Sailor's Knots (Entire Collection) • W.W. Jacobs

... negroes were, most of them, out of the hold, and swarming all round the dirty deck, with a central throng surrounding Vaughan and addressing him in every dialect, and patois of a dialect, from the Zulu click up to ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale

... standin' up in his excitement. "Why not, my boy? I could take you there, chair or no chair. Didn't I go in a litter once, halfway across Africa, when a clumsy Zulu beater let a dying rhino gore me in the hip? Yes, and bossed a caravan of sixty men, and me flat on my back! I'm better able to move now than I was then, too. And I'm ready to try it. Another year of this, and I'd be ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford

... their mothers too, filing past to the factory. Look at their present, and look at their future. And look at the trash taught them in their text-books—trash from its utter dissociation with their lives. You might as well teach a Zulu lace-work, instead of the use of ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... is it moulds the life of man? The Weather! What makes some black and others tan? The Weather! What makes the Zulu live in trees, And Congo natives dress in leaves, While others go in fur and freeze? ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher

... official languages, including Afrikaans, English, Ndebele, Pedi, Sotho, Swazi, Tsonga, Tswana, Venda, Xhosa, Zulu ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency

... of the Two Messengers.—Zulu story of the chameleon and the lizard, 60 sq.; Akamba story of the chameleon and the thrush, 61 sq.; Togo story of the dog and the frog, 62 sq.; Ashantee story of the goat and the sheep, ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... lately won the South-West Devon Singles Championship at Sidmouth, is not a native of Antananarivo, as has been stated, but is, we are informed, of Zulu origin. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 8, 1914 • Various

... you, so his average is still a thousand, and it is fine practice for him. A pleasant time is had by everybody present except you and the nerve. The nerve wraps its hind legs around your breastbone and hangs on desperately. You perspire freely and make noises like a drunken Zulu trying to sing a Swedish folk song while holding a spoonful of ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb

... done you any good, if you had tried," Olive assured him flatly. "You haven't a single point in common. By ancestry and training, you're as unlike as a Zulu and an Eskimo. You began at about the point where Mr. Brenton, if he's lucky, will leave off. Your great-great-grandparents settled once for all the questions that he's agonizing over now. Naturally, you don't remember their struggles, and so you can't see why his should take it out of him, any ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... (which some foolish 'grown-ups' denounced as 'improper'), and Miss Frere's Indian stories. There are hundreds of collections of savage and peasant fairy tales, but, though many of these are most interesting, especially Bishop Callaway's Zulu stories (with the Zulu versions), these do not come in the way of parents and uncles, and therefore do not come in the way of children. It is my wish that children should be allowed to choose their own books. Let their friends give them the money and turn ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various

... having run, there came a native who looked like a Zulu, for he had enormous thighs and the straight up and down carriage, as well ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... the hero and his mother were devoured by a monster. The hero "attacked the creature and was swallowed whole, but cutting his way out he set free all the inhabitants of the world." At the same page is the story of the Zulu Princess Untombinde who was carried off by a dreadful beast. "The king gathered his army and attacked it, but it swallowed up men, and dogs, and cattle, all but one warrior; he slew the monster, and there came out cattle, and horses, and ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous

... clamour, and they are willing to pay. But a loaf costs a shilling. Everything costs a shilling here, unless it costs half-a-crown; and Natal grows fat on war. A shilling for a bit of bread! What is the good of Christianity? So the dusky hands are withdrawn, and the poor Zulu with untutored maw goes starving on. But if any still doubt our primitive ancestry, let them hear that Zulu's outcries of pain, or watch the fortunate man who has really got a loaf, and gripping it with both hands, gnaws it in his corner, turning his ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson

... of the Zulu skirmishes. A detachment of the enemy had surprised them at night; but the little handful of men had repulsed them bravely. Captain Burnett knew help was at hand; they had only to hold out until a larger contingent should join them. He hoped things were going well. They ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... Holmes, not sorry for an excuse to change the subject. "Why, you used a Zulu word, Stanninghame, and yet you say you never were ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford

... leave I'll tell you a story of what I think was one of the bravest things I ever saw. It happened at the beginning of the Zulu War, when the troops were marching into Zululand. Now at that time, as you know, I was turning an honest penny transport-riding for the Government, or rather for the military authorities. I hired them three wagons with the necessary voorloopers and drivers, sixteen ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard

... years have gone by, more than a generation, since first we saw the shores of Southern Africa rising from the sea. Since then how much has happened: the Annexation of the Transvaal, the Zulu War, the first Boer War, the discovery of the Rand, the taking of Rhodesia, the second Boer War, and many other matters which in these quick-moving times are now reckoned ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard

... been doing during all those two hundred and fifty thousand years of sleep. Possibly if Yva's theory, as I understood it, were correct, he had reincarnated as Attila, or Tamerlane, or Napoleon, or even as Chaka the terrible Zulu king. At any rate there he was still in the world, filled with the dread of death, but consumed now as ever by his insatiable and ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard

... away the privileged classes, who live mainly through wars, and would be relegated to obscurity were the resources of England once spent for peaceful development, as those of Republican America are. Friend Fowler will get a vote to add millions to England's burden by an Afghan or Zulu war, or even to squander her means upon worthless members of a more than useless royal family and its dependents of the court long before he will get a pound for his Indian railways. The Republic will hold control of the world's wheat market for a hundred years ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie

... villages, we did not fall in with a single person. The Batoka were driven out of their noble country by the invasions of Moselekatse and Sebetuane. Several tribes of Bechuana and Basutu, fleeing from the Zulu or Matebele chief Moselekatse reached the Zambesi above the Falls. Coming from a land without rivers, none of them knew how to swim; and one tribe, called the Bamangwato, wishing to cross the Zambesi, was ferried over, men and women separately, to different islands, by one of the Batoka chiefs; ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone

... They are of another race, though—the regular niggers. These Zulu sort of chaps like Mak are ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn

... from the office in the Strand by Piccadilly. "I won't trust any more to these private detectives. It's my belief they're a pack of thieves themselves, in league with the rascals they're set to catch, and with no more sense of honour than a Zulu diamond-hand." ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen

... They are on the first floor, looking into Piccadilly from a court, and they are filled with Hogarth's prints, old silver, blue and white china, Zulu weapons and fur rugs, and easy chairs of India silk. You never saw such rooms! And a very good servant, who cooks and valets me and runs errands and takes such good care of me that last night Cust and Balfour called at one to get some supper and he would not let them in. Think of having ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis

... the "Zulu," a British destroyer, came into port half blown away by a mine. Luckily the engine was intact and still working, but the men, who had had marvellous escapes, lost all their kit and rations. We were not able to supply the former, unfortunately, but we remedied the latter with speed, and also took ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp

... British Government was for the benefit of India. I put my life in peril four times for the sake of the Empire,—at the time of the Boer war when I was in charge of the Ambulance corps whose work was mentioned in General Buller's dispatches, at the time of the Zulu revolt in Natal when I was in charge of a similar corps at the time of the commencement of the late war when I raised an Ambulance corps and as a result of the strenuous training had a severe attack of pleurisy, and lastly, in fulfilment ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi

... The Cholera A Long Remembering The Terry Alts The '48 Time A Thing Mitchell Said The Fenian Rising A Great Wonder Another Wonder Father Mathew The War of the Crimea Garibaldi The Buonapartes The Zulu War The Young Napoleon Parnell Mr. Gladstone Queen Victoria's Religion Her Wisdom War and Misery The Present King The Old Age Pension Another ...
— The Kiltartan History Book • Lady I. A. Gregory

... the Prince Louis of Hesse-Darmstadt, died in tragic circumstances. In the following year the Prince Imperial, the only son of the Empress Eugenie, to whom Victoria, since the catastrophe of 1870, had become devotedly attached, was killed in the Zulu War. Two years later, in 1881, the Queen lost Lord Beaconsfield, and, in 1883, John Brown. In 1884 the Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany, who had been an invalid from birth, died prematurely, shortly after his marriage. Victoria's cup ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey

... above his right elbow, two white marks, and the one on the front is bigger than the one behind. I've seen them many a time when he's been sculling or playing tennis. He told me he got them from a spear thrust when he was fighting in the Zulu war. The spear went right in in front and the point came out behind, and if I had a thousand pounds I'd bet it that that man has got those marks ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith

... spreads from north to south and from east to west throughout the American continents. The occurrence of differing human races in widely separated localities is no less familiar and striking, for the red man in America, the Zulu in Africa, the Mongol and Malay in their own territories, display the same discontinuity in distribution that is characteristic of all other groups of animals and of plants as well. As our sphere of knowledge increases, we are impressed more and more forcibly by the diversity ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton

... and southern Bantu area certain cultural variations occur; beehive huts are found among the Zulu-Xosa and Herero, giving place among the Bechuana to the cylindrical variety with conical roof, a type which, with few exceptions, extends north to Abyssinia. The tanged spearhead characteristic of the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... "nothing easier. I know Vincey; I'll introduce you," and he did, and for some minutes we stood chatting—about the Zulu people, I think, for I had just returned from the Cape at the time. Presently, however, a stoutish lady, whose name I do not remember, came along the pavement, accompanied by a pretty fair-haired girl, and these two Mr. Vincey, who clearly knew them well, ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard

... time in supplying the deficiency. It is full of promise; but I should like to know his age. There are things in it that are very clever, to which I attach small importance; it is the shape of the age. And there are passages, particularly the rally in presence of the Zulu king, that show genuine and remarkable narrative talent - a talent that few will have the wit to understand, a talent of strength, spirit, capacity, sufficient vision, and sufficient self-sacrifice, which last is the chief point ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the fulfilment of this condition at any rate near. True, the larger number of the world's inhabitants have remained deaf to the preaching of the true religion; but that does not vitiate the fact that the Gospel HAS been preached 'for a witness' to all unbelievers from the Papist to the Zulu. The responsibility for the continued prevalence of unbelief lies, not with the preachers, ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley

... salmon of every kind can be caught at Waala, where there is a charge of ten marks (eight shillings) for the season. There are also trout and grayling, and the ordinary English flies and minnows are the best bait, Jock Scott, Dry Doctor, Zulu, and shrimp being great favourites. Sportsmen can put up at Lannimalio, or Poukamo, at the peasants' small farms; but information is readily given by the English Consul at Uleborg, who, although ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... Miss Chaplin's modelled pussies, of which there were many, were seldom without some magnificent living representative at 76, Sloane Street. Zulu, an enormous dark long-haired cat, was very popular; but the last of the 'Head Cats,' Calino, was so engaging that, at his death about 1908, Sir Charles decided that he should never be replaced. The sway of these cats ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn

... hobnobbed in Honolulu with the Zouave and the Zulu, I have fought against the Turks at Spion Kop; In a spirit of bravado I've accosted the MIKADO And familiarly addressed him as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 15, 1919 • Various

... deserts. There is gold in its dust, and its rocks are glittering with diamonds. But, thank God, that is not all. It is the great country for which Livingstone was content to spend his life, where the Moffats made the wilderness blossom like the rose, and Colenso won the wild heart of the Zulu to trust him as a brother. You will have Dora and Tom next door to you, and Rose and 'little May' will be constantly coming and going. As for Annie and Harry, how can you tell that their special gifts would not be wasted here, as I have often thought hers would have been if she ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler

... word for that, and I don't suppose you've noticed it, but that's what Mr Gossip in the Morning Mirror called me when he was writing about my getting engaged to Derek. My maid showed me the clipping. There was quite a long paragraph, with a picture of me that looked like a Zulu chieftainess taken in a coal-cellar during a bad fog. Well, after that, what could anyone say against me? I'm a perfect prize! I expect Lady Underhill screamed with joy when she heard the news and went singing all over her ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse

... Somalis of the north, and the dwellers on the upper Nile. The British recruit their black regiments there, and so do you. But to get recruits is not enough. You must set whole nations moving, as the Zulu under Tchaka flowed over ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan



Words linked to "Zulu" :   community, natal



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