bashaw
See also: Bashaw
English
Alternative forms
- bassa [16th–18th c.]
- bassaw (obsolete)
Etymology
Variant of pasha.
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /bəˈʃɔː/
- Rhymes: -ɔː
Noun
bashaw (plural bashaws)
- (now rare, historical) A pasha. [16th–19th c.]
- 1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Printed by John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, OCLC 54573970, partition II, section 2, member 4:
- Radzivilius was much taken with the bassa’s palace in Cairo […].
- 1630, John Smith, True Travels, in Kupperman 1988, p. 44:
- The Bashaw notwithstanding drew together a partie of five hundred before his owne Pallace, where he intended to die […].
- 1809, James Grey Jackson, An Account of the Empire of Marocco, London 1809, p. 79:
- he fancies himself in company with beautiful women; he dreams that he is an emperor, or a bashaw, and that the world is at his nod.
- 1982, TC Boyle, Water Music, Penguin 2006, p. 7:
- Insecure about his infirmity, the Bashaw decreed that all who desired to come into his presence must first submit to having their eyes put out.
-
- (archaic, often derogatory, by extension) A grandee. [from 16th c.]
- A very large siluroid fish (Leptops olivaris) of the Mississippi valley; the goujon or mudcat.
Derived terms
- bashawism
Anagrams
- Wabash, Wahabs