kaal, adjective

/kɑːl/
Forms:
Also carl, kall.
Origin:
Afrikaans.
colloquial
1. Bare; naked; cf. kaalgat sense 1.
c1881 A. Douglass Ostrich Farming 66Select a farm that has on it especially plenty of spec boom and carl prickly pear.
1911 A.H. Frost in Farmer’s Weekly 4 Oct. 134You don’t want a long legged flat sided sheep with a weak back and a kaal pens.
1966 S. Clouts One Life 46The bitter stars, I’ve tasted them, My backside is mos kaal.
1969 A. Fugard Boesman & Lena 54You should have thrown it on the bonfire. And me with it. You should have walked away kaal!
1970 C.S. Hendry Informant, Somerset West, Western CapeWe swam kaal (bare).
1986 B. Simon in S. Gray Market Plays 116I’m just out of the bath all wet my hair dangling and this little hand-towel around me...I see there’s this girl on the other side with a face like a box of bladdy tomatoes...I always walk kaal here. You know, a man likes to feel free.
2. Special Combinations
Kaal Kaffir noun phrase. Obsolete. offensive [see kaffir], Ndebele sense 1 a;
kaalkop/-kɔp/ [Afrikaans, kop head], a bald person; also figurative and transferred senses;
kaalsiekte/-siktə/ [Afrikaans, siekte disease], alopecia in lambs.
1899 J.G. Millais Breath from Veldt 152 (Swart)Oom said they were ‘Kall Kaffirs’, the Dutch appellation for Matabele.
1930 S.T. Plaatje Mhudi (1975) 75But in the summer months no Matebele ever puts on anything. They only carry spears and shields; for the rest they walk about just like children! ‘Oh,’ said an elderly Boer, ‘they are the kaal-Kaffers.’
1894 W.C. Baldwin Afr. Hunting 301The bush was very good, a moderate breeze of wind, which I kept always below, but I had great difficulty in getting the bull out from the company of the ‘carl kop’ (naked head).
1896 R. Wallace Farming Indust. of Cape Col.Kaalkop wheat, a beardless variety well liked by millers.
c1936 S. & E. Afr. Yr Bk & Guide 1022On the silver coins of the Union, the King’s head is crowned. The lack of this in British Silver has earned them the name of ‘Kaalkop,’ bare head.
1932 M.W. Henning Animal Diseases 662 (Swart)The veld in Colesberg is far superior, so that animals are seldom tempted to eat the plant and kaalsiekte is but rarely observed.
Bare; naked;
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18811986
K, nounn.kaalblad, nounn.
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