Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Offensive Used as a disparaging term for a Converso.
Wiktionary
- n. historical Any of the Sephardi Jews who stayed in Iberia during the Spanish Inquisition, and continued to practice Judaism in secret.
WordNet 3.0
- n. (medieval Spain and Portugal) a disparaging term for a Jew who converted to Christianity in order to avoid persecution but continued to practice their religion secretly
Etymologies
- From Spanish marrano, of disputed origin. Perhaps a transferred use of marrano ("hog"), but many sources consider them distinct words. (Wiktionary)
- Spanish, pig, Marrano (from the Jewish prohibition against eating pork), probably from Arabic maḥram, something forbidden, from ḥarama, to forbid; see ḥrm in Semitic roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Maraniss comes from Marrano, which is a word that was given to Spanish Jews during the Inquisition, conversos.”
“Marrano, which is behind the Cibo Palace, near the houses of the”
“He was declared a Marrano, a Jew who had only pretended to embrace the One True Faith.”
“But Sarah, while no longer a Christian in spirit, is not yet a Jew: she has become a Marrano, an exiled Jew under cover running away from Paris twenty years ago to try and discover who she is.”
“Cut off from the Jewish world outside Portugal, with education and worship rendered dangerous by the presence of the Inquisition, Marrano faith became diluted and diverged from Jewish tradition.”
“In late 1594, Elizabeth I's personal physician -- and one of Burghley's highest-placed intelligencers -- a Portugese Marrano (a crypto-Jew) by the name of Roderigo or Roderick or Roger Lopez or Lopus or Lopius, was executed at Tyburn for plotting to murder the queen.”
“A fully fledged Marrano represents as much a taxonomicl challenge to the historian as the duck-billed platypus did to a Victorian naturalist.”
“Death of Don Joseph Nasi, a wealthy Jewish businessman (born as a Marrano in Portugal) who moved to Istanbul from Europe in 1554 and gained much influence by financing the rise to power of Selim II.”
“During his four years in Montpellier, Platter lodged with a Marrano family, Spanish Jews forcibly converted to Christianity.”
“Spanish Galicia, and with the celebrated Marrano family there called”
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