adinkran.
/əˈdɪŋkrə/, U.S. /əˈdɪŋkrə/, West African English /aˈdiŋkra/ A type of stamped cloth worn in Ghana, esp. during mourning. Also: any of numerous symbolic geometrical patterns typical of this cloth.
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1895 C. C. Reindorf Hist. Gold Coast & Asante viii. 125 A dark red cloth called ‘adiṅkra’..is a symbol of death or grief. It is employed to announce the death of a chief, king or queen.
1970 Afr. Arts 3 39/1 Now, everyone wears an imported Java-print, or a cotton cloth made in Ghana or an Adinkira.
2000 Denver Post (Nexis) 17 July b2 At Maxwell Elementary recently, 15 girls were cutting felt and paper to make adinkras, African pictograms they'd read about in a book called ‘The Talking Cloth’.
2005 P. Briggs Africa 72 Lesser chiefs assemble there to pay homage, some dressed in the finest adinkra, others in leopard, serval and other animal skins.
2006 W. C. Rucker River flows On i. 50 After Adinkra was beheaded, his Golden Stool was stripped of its precious metal, revealing dozens of symbols that have since been known as Adinkras.
Compounds
General attributive.
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1925 H. J. Plenderlith in R. S. Rattray Relig. & Art in Ashanti (1927) xxv. 268 Analysis of slag used in making Adinkira dye.
1927 R. S. Rattray Relig. & Art in Ashanti xxv. 264 Adinkira was the famous king of Gyaman..who, having angered the Ashanti king Bonsu-Panyin, by copying the Golden Stool of Ashanti, was defeated and slain by that monarch about the beginning of the nineteenth century. The foundation of the Adinkira cloth is a plain fabric of white cotton dyed russet brown (with the bark of the kuntunkuni tree) which is the colour of Ashanti mourning cloths.
1964 A. A. Y. Kyerematen Panoply of Ghana iii. 46 The designs are identical with some of the patterns found on the adinkra stamped cloths which are regarded as amulet signs or Moslem symbols.
1986 B. K. Laing Search Sweet Country ii. 18 I have recognised a few adinkra patterns in the movement of the dogs.
2009 N.Y. Times 22 Feb. (T: Style Mag.) 155/1 One of the adinkra symbols, sankofa, is an image of a bird turning back toward its tail; its meaning is sometimes translated as ‘return and retrieve’.
This is a new entry (OED Third Edition, December 2011; most recently modified version published online December 2021).
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n.1895