befezzed
/bəˈfɛzd/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 0.00 in modern English
32
Scrabble Score
8
Letters
2
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "[Y]ou have but to clap your hands, and lo! a slave appears, and a very picturesque slave he is, with head befezzed, and full trousers reaching to the knees; [...]"
- "We can see the befezzed Turk in his bazaar dealng out his wares of pipes, tobacco, and trinkets, and the Japanese in his café concert most monotonously marring music, and astounding gaping wonder."
- "[W]e are at once struck with the extraordinary nature of the fact that these intense individualities, these nations of widely different origin, [...] are contained in the circuit of a single empire; and we wonder what force it is which compels the strange cohesion. Surely it is not the sword of yonder cross-legged, lethargic, beturbanned, or befezzed being, who, pipe in mouth, looks softly out of his dark eyes with a half-expressed disdain!"
- "No one who knows Constantinople will be surprised to learn that a brisk trade is done in the readjustment of the fez, for the greater part of the male population is befezzed, and it is essential to the well-being of every wearer of a fez, that his headdress shall preserve its pristine stiffness, [...]"
- "From inside my taxi I watched theaters, cinemas, bookstores, bars, video shops, and cafes flash past, all set in the dusty stone motifs of Cairo Crazy architecture: mansard roofs with sphinx gargoyles, Catholic statues, Stalin gothic, and those coppery statues of befezzed heroes: Talaat Harb, Suleiman Pasha, Saad Zaghloul."
- "By September 7, 1922, every Greek in Smyrna, including Lefty Stephanides, is wearing a fez in order to pass as a Turk. [...] Lefty, newly moneyed and befezzed, makes his way through the maroon-capped crowd at the quay."
Etymology
From be- (prefix intensifying adjectives with the sense ‘adorned with something’) + fezzed (“wearing a fez”). Fezzed is derived from fez + -ed (suffix forming adjectives from nouns, with the sense of having the object represented by the noun), and fez from Ottoman Turkish فس (fes, “fez”), from فس (Fes), فاس (Fez, “the city of Fez, Morocco”) (where the red dye used to colour the hat was produced), from Arabic فَاس (fās, “Fez, Morocco; (archaic) fez”), perhaps related to Central Atlas Tamazight ⴰⴼⵣⴰ (afza, “coarse, rough; hard, rocky”) (referring to the Atlas Mountains).
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /bəˈfɛzd/
- British English: /bɪˈfɛzd/