cafre

French

Pronunciation

• Audio:

  (file)

Noun

cafre m (plural cafres)

1. (obsolete, offensive) Kaffir

Further reading

• “cafre”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

Italian

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈka.fre/
• Rhymes: -afre
• Hyphenation: cà‧fre

Adjective

cafre

1. feminine plural of cafro

Anagrams

• farce

Macanese

Alternative forms

• cáfre

Etymology

Presumably from Portuguese cafre, from Arabic كَافِر (kāfir, “infidel”).

Noun

cafre (rare)

1. black African
2. any dark-skinned person

Usage notes

• Very rarely used in modern Macanese. African soldiers who did military service in Macau up until the 1960s were referred to by the generic name landins.^[1]

Adjective

cafre

1. black

   mui cafre ― black plum

References

1. Batalha, Graciete Nogueira (1988) “cafre”, in Glossário do dialecto macaense: notas linguísticas, etnográficas e folclóricas [Glossary of the Macanese dialect: linguistic, ethnographic and folkloric notes], Macau: Instituto Cultural de Macau, page 338

Further reading

• https://www.macaneselibrary.org/pub/english/uipatua.htm#c

Portuguese

Etymology

From Arabic كَافِر (kāfir, “infidel”). Attested since 1516 (Dicionário Houaiss da Língua Portuguesa).

Pronunciation

 

• (Brazil) IPA^(key): /ˈka.fɾi/

• (Brazil) IPA^(key): /ˈka.fɾi/
  • (Southern Brazil) IPA^(key): /ˈka.fɾe/

• (Portugal) IPA^(key): /ˈka.fɾɨ/

Noun

cafre m (plural cafres)

1. Kaffir

Descendants

• Macanese: cafre, cáfre

Spanish

Etymology

From Portuguese cafre, from Arabic كَافِر (kāfir, “infidel”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈkafɾe/ [ˈka.fɾe]
• Rhymes: -afɾe
• Syllabification: ca‧fre

Noun

cafre m or f by sense (plural cafres)

1. (historical) inhabitant of British Kaffraria, a former British colony in South Africa
2. (Philippines, folklore) ogre or giant believed to smoke cigars and live in old trees, especially balete (banyan) trees

Adjective

cafre m or f (masculine and feminine plural cafres)

1. (historical, relational) of British Kaffraria
2. (colloquial) cruel and barbaric
3. (colloquial) uncouth, boorish

Further reading

• “cafre”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 2024 December 10