Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun See gri-gri.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun An African talisman or charm.
  • noun an African magician or fetich priest.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A kind of African talisman or charm.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun an African amulet

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

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Examples

  • I saw a native doctor making his "greegree," or charm, for rain.

    Journal of an African Cruiser Horatio Bridge 1849

  • The ball had cut the ligature which bound his "greegree" of shells around his head, and the faithless charm lay on the ground beside him.

    Journal of an African Cruiser Horatio Bridge 1849

  • From moon to moon the chalk lay before the main idol in the greegree house, and thus absorbed the qualities that made it powerful in the spirit world.

    The Green-Eyed Shwemyethna 2010

Comments

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  • Variant of grigri.

    December 2, 2008

  • Gris-gris is grey dirt, but the page is mostly correct it's still made into an amulet or curse along with a few other ingredients, and it is derived from West African Yoruba-based religions. Thanks to cultural appropriation we have African diaspora or Afro-American traditions (like Voodoo in Haiti, Louisiana, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, and Brazil altho they go by different names) which is where the knowledge of this spell in the Western world comes from.

    February 8, 2024