mutsha, noun

/ˈmʊtʃa/
Forms:
moocha, mouchaShow more Also moocha, moucha, mucha, mutya, umatsha, umtcha, umutsha, umutya.
Origin:
IsiZuluShow more IsiZulu umutsha man or girl’s loin-covering.
a. A loin-cloth of animal’s tails or leather strips, part of traditional (Zulu) male dress; moochi sense a. b. moochi sense b. Cf. apron sense 1, beshu, stertriem.
1836 N. Isaacs Trav. (1937) II. 258The men wear ‘Umtchas’..strips of skins of animals, neatly fastened to a small strip of hide, reaching from hip to hip, fastened in front by cords.
1872 C.A. Payton Diamond Diggings 137A Kafir’s notions of dress are primitive in the extreme; his only garment the ancient mutya or loin-cloth.
1885 H. Rider Haggard King Solomon’s Mines 153He slipped off the ‘moocha’ or girdle round his middle, and stood naked before us.
1905 Native Tribes of Tvl 132They wear round their waists skins, with the hair outwards, after the fashion of the Zulu ‘moocha’.
1911 M.S. Evans Black & White in S.E. Afr. 93The hereditary chief of the Qadi clan, followed by his counsellors and attendants, clad for the most part in the mutya of their ancestors.
1923 Chambers’s Jrnl (U.K.) Apr. 222The native kilt or moocha composed of strips of raw hide.
1934 B.I. Buchanan Pioneer Days 26A number of stalwart Native men..clad in only a mutya (a belt of ox-hide from which depended fore and aft a fringe of monkey tails).
1936 Blackwood’s Mag. (U.K.) Mar. 304All the bravery of the Zulu war-dress was there:..the leopard-skin karosses, the embroidered moochas, the white goat-hide garters.
1937 C. Birkby Zulu Journey 124Zulus wearing nothing but the umutya, the girdle of buckskin dangling from their lean loins.
1948 O. Walker Kaffirs Are Lively 30The menfolk stride along bare-thighed, in swinging umutshas of monkey-tails and hide-strips instead of trousers.
1967 E.M. Slatter My Leaves Are Green 1He wore only his ‘mutsha’ of monkey-skin tails, and his head-ring had been freshly larded.
1974 C.T. Binns Warrior People 208The uMutsha and the iBeshu form the attire commonly worn in the kraals of Zululand and are the national dress of the Zulu males, although unfortunately this is being..supplanted nowadays by the cast-off clothing of Europeans.
A loin-cloth of animal’s tails or leather strips, part of traditional (Zulu) male dress; moochi sense a.
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18361974

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IsiZulu
muti, nounn.muurkas, nounn.
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