obeah

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o·be·ah

(ō′bē-ə) also o·bi (ō′bē)

n. pl. o·be·ahs also o·bis

1. A form of religious belief of African origin, involving sorcery and practiced in Jamaica, some other parts of the West Indies, and nearby tropical America.

2. An object, charm, or fetish used in the practice of this belief.

[West Indian English, of West African origin; akin to Efik ubio, anything noxious, something put in the ground to cause sickness or death, bad omen.]

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

obeah

(ˈəʊbɪə)

(Clothing & Fashion) another word for obi²

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

o•be•ah

(ˈoʊ bi ə)

also obi

1. a form of belief involving sorcery, practiced in parts of the West Indies, South America, the southern U.S., and Africa.

2. a fetish or charm used in practicing obeah.

[1750–60; ultimately < a West African language; compare Twi ɔ-bayifó sorcerer]

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Noun	1.	obeah - (West Indies) followers of a religious system involving witchcraft and sorcery obi cult - followers of an exclusive system of religious beliefs and practices the Indies, West Indies - the string of islands between North America and South America; a popular resort area
	2.	obeah - a religious belief of African origin involving witchcraft and sorcery; practiced in parts of the West Indies and tropical Americas obi cultus, religious cult, cult - a system of religious beliefs and rituals; "devoted to the cultus of the Blessed Virgin"

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References in periodicals archive ?

Lacing Caribbean folklore (Anancy stories, cowhoofed obeahs, beautiful soucouyants) and biblical allusions into the work, Yanique produces fiction we might call 'realist mythology.'" WALTON MUYUMBA

This sensuous, queasy, dream-sequence uncertainty, the casual allusions to obeah (witchcraft) and to eerie island folktales, sets up a kind of contrapuntal tension against the grimly real history (including the Second World War and Korean War) surging alongside--compounded, too, by the steady, ugly incursions on island life by American culture and tourism" joan frank

Land of Love and Drowning

Voodoos and Obeahs: Phases of West India Witchcraft.

The Herskovitses' questions of African origins struck chords in a larger web of contestations over the colonial definition, illegalization, and repression of certain religious practices and communities on the island, including obeah ("African witchcraft") and the so-called Shouters.

This included determining the nature and origin of such practices, as well as a (malleable and contested) hierarchy: revealed, true, natural, and pseudo-religions, as well as sects and, farther down the scale, idolatry, superstition, fetishism, and obeah (or witchcraft).

Imagining religions in a Trinidad village: the Africanity of the Spiritual Baptist movement and the politics of comparing religions

(46) Long, The History of Jamaica, II: 451-452; Schuler "Ethnic Slave Rebellions," 383; Joseph Williams, Voodoos and Obeahs: Phases of West India Witchcraft, (New York: Dial Press Inc., 1932), 116.

Croix, Danish West Indies, 1759," Journal of Negro History 11 (1926), 55; 57; Long, The History of Jamaica, II: 465; Schuler, Ethnic Slave Rebellion," 384; Mullin, Africa in America, 41; Williams, Voodoos and Obeahs, 163.

"Only draw in your countrymen": Akan culture and community in Colonial New York City

"Anyway, we were in our obeahs and our headdresses and everything, and so Jim, the husband, stepped out and he says, 'OK, officer, what can I do to help you?'

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Dianne Stewart similarly recalls how African spiritualists called Obeah man, in Jamaica, are marginalized in the literature on Jamaica's anti-slavery and anti-colonial movements.

Restoring the Obeah man to his rightful place in Jamaica's Black resistance hierarchy is how to correct Obeah's demonization in Jamaica where it is common for Afro-Jamaica's mid nineteenth century religiosity to either be stamped with a Methodist, Baptist or Moravian label.

Cutting across space and time: Obeah's service to Jamaica's freedom struggle in slavery and emancipation