Forms: α. 8 krosse, cross, 8–9 kross; β. 8– kaross, 9– caross, karross. [South African karos: see note below.]
A mantle (or sleeveless jacket) made of the skins of animals with the hair on, used by the Hottentots and other natives of South Africa.
α. 1731. Medley, trans. Kolben’s Cape G. Hope, I. 187. Their Krosses (as the Hottentots term them) or mantles, cover the trunk of their bodies.
1775. Masson, in Phil. Trans., LXVI. 295. These Hottentots were all cloathed in crosses, or mantles, made of the hides of oxen.
1785. G. Forster, trans. Sparrman’s Voy. Cape G. Hope, II. v. 187. These cloaks or krosses, (as they call them in broken Dutch).
1814. Thunberg, Acc. Cape, in Pinkerton’s Voy., XVI. 33. The sheepskin, which they call a Kross.
1839. Marryat, Phant. Ship, x. They wore not their sheepskin krosses.
β. 1785. G. Forster, trans. Sparrman’s Voy. Cape G. Hope (1786), I. 188. The women have a long peak to their karosses.
1822. Burchell, Trav., I. 267. The kaross, a genuine Hottentot dress, made of sheep-skin prepared with the hair on, was pretty much used by both sexes Ibid. (1824), II. 350. Kaross and kobo are but two words for the same thing; the former belonging to the Hottentot, and the latter to the Sichuana, language.
1834. Pringle, Afr. Sk., i. 132. Dressed in the old sheep-skin mantle or caross.
1880. Sir S. Lakeman, What I saw in Kaffir-land, 58. Blankets and karosses were also left behind.
Comb. 1883. J. Mackenzie, Day-dawn in Dark Places, 170. Disturbed in their mid-day repose, in their skin-dressing and kaross-making, the men of the town obeyed the unwonted summons.
[Not a Bantu word, and app. not Hottentot. In W. Ten Rhyne’s vocabulary of 1673 (in Churchill’s Voy., IV. 845) ‘Karos colobium’ (i.e., a jacket without sleeves or with arm-holes) is placed among the ‘Corrupt Dutch Words,’ which are separated from the ‘Original Hottentot Words.’ In Sparrman’s Voy. 1772–6 (see quot. 1785) it is called ‘broken Dutch.’ P. Kolbe (1745, in Astley’s Voyages, III. 351) gives the name of kut-kros to the skin-apron worn by women, and kul-kros to that of the men: in these the first element is Dutch. But it has not been ascertained of what Dutch word kros or karos could be a corruption. (Mr. James Platt, to whom these data for the history of the word are due, has suggested the possibility of its representing Du. kuras, or Pg. couraça, Sp. coraza, cuirass (Ten Rhyne’s ‘Corrupt Dutch Words’ include krallen, kraal, really from Sp. corral, Pg. curral.) See Notes and Queries, 9th Ser. V. 125, 236; Athenæum, 19 May 1900.) But Hesseling, Het Afrikaansch (Leiden 1899) 81, thinks the word Hottentot.]
