aba

A coarse, often striped, felted fabric from the Middle East, woven from goat or camel hair.

A loose-fitting sleeveless garment, made from aba or silk, worn by Arabs.

'A pale mauve abba such as you buy in the East.'

Here Nessim would sit night after night in the winter, dressed in his old rust-coloured abba, staring gravely at Betelgeuse, or hovering over books of calculations for all the world like a medieval soothsayer.

An outer garment made of the above, very simple in form, worn by the Arabs of the desert. The illustration shows such an aba, made of two breadths of stuff sewed together to make an oblong about four by nine feet.

Such a garment that is specific to women.

Holonym: hijab

An altazimuth used for astronomy on either land or water.

An electric fish of species Gymnarchus niloticus (frankfish, freshwater rat-tail, African knifefish), found in swamps, lakes and rivers in Africa.