Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A Spanish Moor who converted to Christianity after the Reconquista.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The offspring of a mulatto woman and a Spaniard; also, in general, any one with a considerable amount of negro blood.
  • Same as Moresque.
  • noun In Span. hist., a person of the Moorish race; a Moor.
  • noun The language of the Moors of Spain.
  • noun The Moorish dance known also as morris-dance.
  • noun A dancer of the morris-dance.
  • noun A dance performed by one person, differing from the morris-dance. See the last quotation.
  • noun The style of architecture or ornamentation commonly called Moorish.

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

  • noun The Moorish language.
  • noun A Moorish dance, now called morris dance.
  • noun One who dances the Moorish dance.
  • noun Moresque decoration or architecture.
  • adjective Moresque.

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

  • noun A Moor.
  • noun The Moorish style of architecture.
  • noun A Muslim convert to Christianity.
  • noun obsolete The morris dance.
  • noun obsolete One who dances the morris dance.
  • proper noun The Moorish language.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Spanish, from Moro, Moor, from Latin Maurus; see Moor.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Spanish morisco Moorish.

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Examples

  • a natural sensation of pleasure that the youth resumed an apparel suitable to his birth, and which no one was personally more fitted to become; but it was with much deeper feeling that he hastily, and as secretly as possible, flung round his neck, and concealed under the collar and folds of his ornamented doublet, a small thin chain of gold, curiously linked in what was called Morisco work.

    Anne of Geierstein 2008

  • This view, which saw the Morisco members of the community as dangerous strangers, has no basis in fact in the notarial registers and parish records we have examined thus far; in fact, the term "Morisco" was rarely used in the official records kept in these villages.

    Like Wheat to the Miller: Community, Convivencia, and the Construction of Morisco Identity in Sixteenth-Century Aragon 2002

  • The 'Morisco' they called it; and it was much admired; and the fashion of it spread throughout Spain -- scaled the very Pyrenees, and invaded France.

    Yet Again Max Beerbohm 1914

  • Rejected by his fellow Moors as being a “Nazarene”and condemned to be treated as a Moor by the Christians due to his crypto-Muslim Morisco culture public Muslim practices being banned in 1499, Hernando bears witness to the mutual distrust that Morisco and Spaniard alike felt toward one another.

    TATTOO MACHINE IS AWESOME; And Recent Omnivoracious Features 2009

  • It is the most complicated of all the measures and is held to be of Morisco or Hispano – Moorish origin.

    The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night 2006

  • "If I, the Princess of Wales herself, can be left in a burning campsite, then you, who are nothing but a Morisco anyway, can certainly endure it."

    Excerpt: The Constant Princess by Philippa Gregory 2005

  • Moors for his supper: a thousand wild legends were told of Ivanhoe, indeed, so that the Morisco warriors came half vanquished into the field, and fell an easy prey to the Spaniards, who cut away among them without mercy.

    Burlesques 2006

  • His horse, too, was harnessed in the Morisco fashion, with great shovel stirrups.

    The Alhambra 2002

  • Presently they beheld a sturdy, sunburnt fellow, clad in the ragged garb of a foot-soldier, leading a powerful Arabian horse, caparisoned in the ancient Morisco fashion.

    The Alhambra 2002

  • It is overlooked by a small gallery supported by marble pillars and Morisco arches.

    The Alhambra 2002

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