zeriba

1. (historical) A fence of the type once commonly improvised in northeastern Africa from thornbushes.Examples: "On the left shore two neat farmyards shew themselves in a shining seriba of reeds, the stalks of which are connected very regularly with each other, but perhaps only afford resistance to tame animals."; "1895, A. H. Keane, Africa, Volume I, North Africa, (Stanford’s Compendium of Geography and Travel), London: Edward Stanford, Chapter 5, p. 245, footnote 1, In Arabic zeriba means any kind of rough and ready fenced enclosure; hence the expression “zeriba country” applied by some geographers to the northern slope of the Nile-Congo divide, where the Arab traders and slave-hunters had founded numerous palisaded stations long before the establishment of the Egyptian administration in that region."historical

2. (by extension) An improvised stockade, particularly those similarly located and constructed.Examples: "The Black Watch (Royal Highlanders) advanced this morning to Baker Pasha’s zariba."; "I clutched at a gun - my pockets were full of cartridges - and, parting the thorn bushes at the gate of our zareba, quickly slipped out."broadly

3. (by extension) A camp of troops employing such an enclosure.Examples: "[…] forming a zariba, or square, to resist cavalry."broadly

4. (by extension) Any wild and barbed barrier, evocative of a briar or thorn patch.Examples: "Once you had passed the initial zareba of fruit stands, souvenir stands, ice-cream stands, and the lair of the enthusiast whose aim in life it was to sell you picture postal-cards, and had won through to the long walk where the seats were, you were practically alone with Nature."; "[…] a small withered soldier sat by the prison door with a gun between his knees and the shadows of the palms pointed at him like a zareba of sabres."; "The hovel stood in the centre of what had once been a vegetable garden, but was now a patch of rank weeds. Surrounding this, almost like a zareba, was an irregular ring of gorse and brambles, an unclaimed vestige of the original common."broadly