Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In northern Africa, the head or chief of a tribe, or the governor of a town or local district.

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

  • noun A local governor or leader, especially in North Africa or Moorish Spain; an alcaide.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Arabic قائد (qā’id) ‘leader’. Compare alcaide.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word kaid.

Examples

  • He subbed for three weeks while jack was kaid up with pneumonia, and was very funny.

    There is a man. A certain man – The Bleat. 2010

  • Suppose kaid you wanted it stored for a year and then Ichanged your mind and wanted to get, say,

    Put On By Cunning Rendell, Ruth, 1930- 1981

  • But as wishing would bring nothing, we dismounted and walked by the side of our animals, the kaid alone remaining in the saddle.

    Morocco S.L. Bensusan

  • The local kaid is always a tyrant, but he is above all things a man, keen-witted, adventurous, prompt to strike, and determined to bleed his subjects white.

    Morocco S.L. Bensusan

  • To show his might, El Arbi had sent the boy with them, that all men might know how the social scales of Tiensiert held the kaid on one side and the rest of the people on the other.

    Morocco S.L. Bensusan

  • Some friend of the kaid having given him due notice of the raiders 'intentions -- treachery is a painfully common feature of these forays -- he had been well prepared to meet these godless men.

    Morocco S.L. Bensusan

  • She is of kaid Abdeslam's household, though he bought her a few weeks before his fall, and she must be sold.

    Morocco S.L. Bensusan

  • Thereafter your Sultan's great men welcomed the kaid yet more kindly, and showed him all that Allah the One had given them in his mercy, their palaces, their workplaces, their devil ships that move without sails over the face of the waters, and their unveiled women who pass without shame before the faces of men.

    Morocco S.L. Bensusan

  • And though the kaid said nothing, he remembered all these things.

    Morocco S.L. Bensusan

  • Naturally enough, it turns the talk to war and slaughter, and I learn that the local kaid has an endless appetite for thieves and other children of shameless women, that guns are fired very often within his jurisdiction, and baskets full of heads have been collected after a purely local fight.

    Morocco S.L. Bensusan

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • The sheep-louse. --Dr. Jamieson's Scottish Dictionary and Supplement, 1841.

    May 24, 2011