Definitions

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

  • noun A water wheel with buckets attached to its rim, used to raise water from a stream, especially for transfer to an irrigation channel.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A hydraulic machine of a kind used in Spain, Syria, Palestine, and other countries for raising water.

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

  • noun A large water wheel, turned by the action of a stream against its floats, and carrying at its circumference buckets, by which water is raised and discharged into a trough; used in Arabia, China, and elsewhere for irrigating land; a Persian wheel.

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

  • noun A water wheel with attached buckets, used to raise and deposit water.
  • noun Any machine using buckets to raise water to an aqueduct.

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

  • noun a water wheel with buckets attached to the rim; used to raise water for transfer to an irrigation channel

Etymologies

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

[Spanish, from Arabic nā‘ūra, from Aramaic nā‘urā, from nə‘ar, to shake, roar; see nעr in Semitic roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Spanish noria, from Arabic ناعورة (nāʿūra(t)), from Classical Syriac ܢܥܘܪܬܐ (nāʿōrtāʾ, "water wheel; growler"), from ܢܥܪ (nʿar, "to roar, growl, bray").

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Examples

Comments

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  • "Politically shrewd, pleasure-seeking, a great friend to the hāra, he speaks the language of all-night revelry, respects Jewish customs and holidays, learned their poetry, recites Genesis in Aramaic, has uncovered the secrets of cabalistic interpretation, settles disputes regarding peripateticism of the Toledano and Hispanically Judeo-Arab sort, contests Avicenna's theory of emanation, combines discursive reason with the solemnity of the vagina, delights in elliptical and allusive language, lover of several Arab and Jewish entertainers, old-fashioned in taste and dress, a word lover, heartbreaker, keeper of the night, nocturnal wing, lunar matrix of riddles, noria cascading water: creaking waterwheel, wood imbibed, whispering trickle, jasmine and sweet summer, hatred of the occupier and what came before, neither is of us by body, by will: mockery of the cops and other prospective betrayers who, once they've agreed to kill, nonetheless seek to save face."

    Talismano by Abdelwaheb Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, pp 84-85 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback

    September 25, 2011