Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A cap of cloth or felt, nearly always red, and having a tassel, usually of dark-blue silk, at the crown.

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

  • noun 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.

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

  • noun A red felt or cloth cap with a tassel, worn in the Arab world; a fez.

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

  • noun a felt cap (usually red) for a man; shaped like a flat-topped cone with a tassel that hangs from the crown

Etymologies

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

[Modern colloquial Arabic ṭarbūš, perhaps from Spanish traposo, ragged, or trapucho, old rag, worthless item of clothing (perhaps used as a slang term for the tarboosh, the typical male headwear of the Maghreb, by Moriscos who settled in the Maghreb after their expulsion from Spain in the 1600s) , from trapo, rag, from Late Latin drappus, cloth, perhaps of Gaulish origin.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Arabic طربوس (ʈarbūsh).

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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.

    The Project Gutenberg Complete Works of Gilbert Parker Gilbert Parker 1897

  • 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.

    Donovan Pasha, and Some People of Egypt — Volume 2 Gilbert Parker 1897

  • 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.

    Donovan Pasha, and Some People of Egypt — Complete Gilbert Parker 1897

  • One wore a kind of tarboosh on his head, and the others had bits of rag twisted round their hair.

    Korea's Fight for Freedom 1900

  • 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.

    Day of Honey Annia Ciezadlo 2011

  • 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.

    Day of Honey Annia Ciezadlo 2011

  • 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.

    Tuesday, January 27, 2009 As'ad 2009

  • 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 Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night 2006

  • 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" 2006

  • 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

    Vanity Fair 2006

Comments

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  • Usually red, sometimes with a scarf draped around it or covered with a veil. Larger than a fez. See tarbush.

    November 14, 2007

  • 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'.

    August 8, 2009