raw, adjective

Origin:
EnglishShow more Special application of the general English senses of raw, ‘uncultivated’, ‘uncivilized’ (rarely used), or the more common ‘inexperienced’, ‘untrained’.
derogatory
Used of Black African people: a. From a traditional tribal or rural culture. Cf. red adjective sense 2 b ii. b. Uneducated; unsophisticated; red adjective sense 2 b iv. See also blanket sense a, red-blanketed.
1866 E.L. Price Jrnls (1956) 200My cook..very civil and respectful, wh. is really all I care for, because the more thoroughly ‘raw’ or untaught the better for me.
1884 Queenstown Free Press 19 Feb.Selecting two of his smartest detectives, he directed them to assume the ‘red clay’ and blanket of the raw Kafir.
1890 Cape Law Jrnl VII. 225Raw natives, or natives who have not come under the conflicting influences of civilisation.
c1911 S. Playne Cape Col. 39In their ‘raw’ state especially the Kafirs are exceedingly superstitious, and have a firm belief in the power of witchcraft.
1925 D. Kidd Essential Kafir 18I have travelled for many years among the raw Kafirs, and yet have been far less conscious of their nakedness in real life than when looking into shop windows of colonial towns, where photographs of Kafir nakedness..are exposed to view.
1933 W.H.S. Bell Bygone Days 62An instance of where a raw native, quite unaccustomed to the ways of civilization, did not get justice.
1949 L. Hunter Afr. Dawn 161They did not know that his visit to the mines had made him familiar with these things, but he was annoyed that they should think him so ‘raw.’
1952 L.E. Neame White Man’s Afr. 46The Natives in the Reserves consist mainly of raw, or ‘red’ tribesmen who are intensely conservative.
1953 D. Jacobson Long Way from London 107Paulus was a ‘raw boy’, as raw as a boy could possibly come. He was a muscular, moustached and bearded African, with pendulous ear-lobes showing the slits in which the tribal plugs had once hung.
1963 Wilson & Mafeje Langa 14Class differences are clearly evident in town..the townsmen looking down on the migrants as uncivilized or ‘raw’.
1973 Cape Times 13 Apr. 9My other maid doesn’t know Monday from Friday — she’s raw, but reliable.
1976 M. Tholo in C. Hermer Diary of Maria Tholo (1980) 152The Bhacas were very confident because they knew how to wield a kierie. They were still raw from the country. But they hadn’t reckoned with the stones from the township people.
1979 D. Smuts (tr. of E. Joubert’s Swerfjare van Poppie Nongena) in Fair Lady 9 May 120He is not happy because he does not know the people in the country, he calls them the raw people.
From a traditional tribal or rural culture.
Uneducated; unsophisticated; red adjective sense 2 b iv.
Derivatives:
Hence rawness  noun.
1957 D. Jacobson Through Wilderness (1977) 25There were enough Africans to be found..who were more sophisticated than himself, and though they teased him for his ‘rawness’..,they helped him too.
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18661979

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rawness

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RAU, nounn.RB, nounn.
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