Skip to content
OneKitly

Moor

nounproper nounattested in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//mɔː//
  • United Kingdom//mʊə//
  • United States//mʊɹ//
  • United States//mɔɹ//

A person of an ethnic group speaking the Hassaniya Arabic language, mainly inhabiting Western Sahara, Mauritania, and parts of neighbouring countries (Morocco, Mali, Senegal etc.).

noun

  1. 1

    historicalA member of an ancient Amazigh people from Mauretania.

  2. 2

    historicalA member of an Islamic people of Arab or Amazigh origin ruling Spain and parts of North Africa from the 8th to the 15th centuries.

    [King of] Moro[cco]. Ye Moores and valiant men of Barbary, How can ye ſuffer theſe indignities?

  3. 3

    archaicA Muslim or a person from the Middle East or Africa.

  4. 4

    datedA person of mixed Arab and Amazigh ancestry inhabiting the Mediterranean coastline of northwest Africa.

  5. 5

    A person of an ethnic group speaking the Hassaniya Arabic language, mainly inhabiting Western Sahara, Mauritania, and parts of neighbouring countries (Morocco, Mali, Senegal etc.).

Etymology

From Middle English More, Moore, from Old French More (modern French Maure), from Latin Maurus (“a Moor, meaning a Mauretanian, an inhabitant of Mauretania”), from Ancient Greek Μαυρούσιος (Mauroúsios, “Mauretanian”). Doublet of Moro.

proper noun

  1. 1

    A surname. A surname from Irish.

  2. 2

    A surname. An English surname transferred from the given name.

Forms

plural
Moors
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).