Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A brimless, usually red felt cap with a silk tassel, worn by some Middle Eastern Muslim men, either by itself or as the base of a turban.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A cap of cloth or felt, nearly always red, and having a tassel, usually of dark-blue silk, at the crown. It is worn by the men of all Moslem nations (except the desert tribes). It differs slightly in shape in Turkey (see
fez ) and in Egypt, the Barbary States, etc. It forms the inner part of the turban.
Wiktionary
- n. A red felt or cloth cap with a tassel, worn in the Arab world; a fez.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A red cap worn by Turks and other Eastern nations, sometimes alone and sometimes swathed with linen or other stuff to make a turban. See fez.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a felt cap (usually red) for a man; shaped like a flat-topped cone with a tassel that hangs from the crown
Etymologies
- From Arabic طربوس (ʈarbūsh). (Wiktionary)
- Egyptian Arabic ṭarbūš, from Turkish terposh, probably from Persian sarpūsh, headdress : sar, head; + pūsh-, to don. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Outside the presence Dicky unbuttoned his coat like an Englishman again, and ten minutes later flung his tarboosh into a corner of the room; for the tarboosh was the sign of official servitude, and Dicky was never the perfect official.”
“One wore a kind of tarboosh on his head, and the others had bits of rag twisted round their hair.”
“One of them had a tarboosh sitting on top of it, the little red fez that the Ottomans had required their subjects to wear—the symbol of a man.”
“But the oil sheikhs and Wahhabi sheikhs were viewed as men of the “tarboosh” and mocking them was necessary in Arab political literature, even in café discussions.”
“Then he changed all his clothes and, donning a travelling cloak and a tarboosh, took a case, containing a spear of bamboo-cane, four-and-twenty cubits long, made in several pieces, to fit into one another.”
“The basic hat is a tarboosh or fez that P. says will make most British viewers of a certain age think of the comedian Tommy Cooper.”
Peter’s search for details on a “mystery fez” | Diane Duane's weblog: "Out of Ambit"
“A Turkish officer with an immense plume of feathers (the Janizaries were supposed to be still in existence, and the tarboosh had not as yet displaced the ancient and majestic head-dress of the true believers) was seen couched on”
“But Mr. Pendennis wanted to see him, and begged him, with a smile, to enter: whereupon Mr. Foker took off the embroidered tarboosh or fez (it had been worked by the fondest of mothers) and advanced, bowing to the gentlemen and smiling on them graciously.”
“A man — in a long yellow gown, with a long beard somewhat tinged with grey, with his head shaved, and wearing on it, first, a white wadded cotton nightcap; second, a red tarboosh — made his appearance and welcomed me cordially.”
“When leaving in the morning for the offices of the department store he owned—dressed in a three-piece European suit, with a traditional red felt tarboosh on his head and a gold watchchain stretched across his round belly—he looked both stern and self-satisfied.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘tarboosh’.
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names of hats
liripipe, cowl, capuchon, liripipium, snood, bonnet, toque, turban, poke, toboggan-cap, crown, fedora and 72 more...
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hats and headgear
Everything hats,things with hoods,hoods,scarves,crowns,useful
adjectival forms,hat expressions,
alternate spellingsbabushka, balaclava, bamoral, baseball cap, beanie, bearskin, beaver hat, beret, billycock, biretta, boater, bobble hat and 422 more...
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Hats Off!
trilby, porkpie, panama, fedora, pillbox, stovepipe, turban, boater, ball cap, pastorella, beret, bowler and 219 more...
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Quaintnesses
For those who wish no words were ever forgotten
opprobrium, tedium, encomium, odium, ire, enmity, beguile, wile, brazen, popinjay, squit, hoity-toity and 1161 more...
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Vanity Fair
sunshiny, equipage, wherry, affidavit, gimcracks, nabobs, palanquin, toxophilite, psha, superabundant, pomatums, finikin and 128 more...
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Sheldonfarrell's Words
tarboosh, talaria, rumply, pineappley, rotogravure, table stakes, carnie, tableau vivant, trebuchet, pince-nez, mojibake, portmanteau and 2 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for tarboosh.

bilby
They are the crescent moon
and the star, the cross, the crown, the turban
and the tarboosh, gnarled glances of soldiers,
the figures of dead men rising from the earth,
Suleyman with a basket of heads at his pommel
and the dead king Lajos in his blue bonnet.
- Ken Smith, 'The Shadow of God'. Aug 8, 2009
reesetee Usually red, sometimes with a scarf draped around it or covered with a veil. Larger than a fez. See tarbush.
Nov 14, 2007