Forms: 6 cafar, 6–7 caffare, 7 cafre, coffery, 8 coffrie, -ree, -re, 9 caffree, 8–9 cafer, caffer, ceffre: see also KAFIR. [ad. Arab. kāfir infidel, impious wretch, one who does not recognize the blessings of God, f. kafara to cover up, conceal, deny.]
ǁ 1. A word meaning ‘infidel,’ applied by the Arabs to all non-Mohammedans, and hence to particular tribes or nations. More accurately kafir.
1680. Taverner’s Relat. of Tunquin, 86. The Cafer seeing his Child white, would have immediately fallen upon his Wife and strangled her.
1698. Fryer, Acc. E. India & P., 91 (Y.). Why he suffers … this Coffery (Unbeliever) to vaunt it thus.
1799. Sir T. Munro, Lett., in Life, I. 221 (Y.). He [Tippoo] … was to drive the English Caffers out of India.
1804. Duncan, Mariner’s Chron., I. 297. He … put me in imminent danger of my life, by telling the natives that I was a Caffer, and not a Mussulman.
1812. A. Plumtre, Lichtenstein’s S. Africa, I. 241. Being Mahommedans, they gave the general name of Cafer (Liar, Infidel) to all the inhabitants of the coasts of Southern Africa.
1817. Keatinge, Trav., I. 250. A Moor will … point his musquet at, the women abuse, and the children pursue the caffre (infidel), the generic term for Christian here.
2. spec. In ordinary Eng. use: A member of a South African race of blacks belonging to the great Bântu family, and living on the north-east of Cape Colony, in Caffraria or Caffre-land. Also the name of their language, and used attributively.
Cust (Modern Languages of Africa, II. 298) makes Kafir the general name of his Eastern subdivision of the Southern division of the Bántu family, and includes under it Xosa, Zulu, and Gwamba; in popular use the term has been generally restricted to the Xosa, or to these and the Zulu.
1599. Hakluyt, Voy., II. I. 242. The Captaine of this castle [Mozambique] hath certaine voyages to this Cafraria … to trade with the Cafars.
1731. Medley, Kolben’s Cape G. Hope, I. 81. The Caffres … are so far from bearing any affinity or resemblance with the Hottentots, that they are a quite different sort of people.
1833. Athenæum, 2 Nov., 729. A mission among the Ammakosa, or Kaffers, as they have been erroneously denominated.
1834. Pringle, Afr. Sk., xiv. 413. The Caffers are a tall, athletic, and handsome race of men.
3. A native of Kafiristan in Asia; see KAFIR.
4. attrib. and in comb. as Caffre-boy, -slave; Caffre-bread, a South African cycadaceous tree with edible pith; Caffre-corn, one of the names of Indian millet, Sorghum vulgare, cultivated as a cereal in tropical Africa.
1781. India Gaz., No. 19 (Y.). To be sold by Private Sale two Coffree Boys.
1786. G. Forster, trans. Sparrman’s Voy. Cape G. Hope, II. 10. The colonists call it Caffer-corn.
1800. Symes, Embassy Ava, 10 (Y.). The Caffre slaves, who had been introduced fo the purpose of cultivating the lands.
1803. R. Percival, in Naval Chron., X. 27. Which was the case with a Caffree boy.
1866. Treas. Bot., 450. Encephalartos … the interior of the trunk, and the centre of the ripe female cones, contains a spongy farinaceous pith, made use of by the Caffers as food, and hence the trees are called … Caffer-bread.
