impi
Americannoun
-
impies,
plural
-
impis
plural
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of impi
1875–80; < Zulu: impi, armed force, battle
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Within a year, his modest impi of 350 warriors had swollen to 2,000.
From Time Magazine Archive
The impi covered the distance at a dead run.
From Time Magazine Archive
Another duty which fell to us was the leading of the ox-teams, for, in fact, the boys of my impi could be used for every service not requiring the strength of a man.
From Adventures in Swaziland The Story of a South African Boer by Owen Rowe O'Neil
Each impi would halt in front of him and give the royal salute, thus acknowledging him as their ruler.
From Adventures in Swaziland The Story of a South African Boer by Owen Rowe O'Neil
I had expected that we would accompany Buno to the cliff beyond Sheba's Breasts, but Tuys told me that the king and his impi had left during the night.
From Adventures in Swaziland The Story of a South African Boer by Owen Rowe O'Neil
The British had divided Zululand into 13 ineffectual kingdoms whose impis endlessly clashed for a power no longer there.
From Time Magazine Archive
Stamping their feet, beating on their shields with their assegais and roaring the war cry usutu!, the warrior impis, arrayed like the right and left horns of the buffalo, would begin encircling the foe.
From Time Magazine Archive
De Klerk, moreover, has expressed ambivalence when Zulu war parties known as impis have paraded provocatively through township streets carrying spears and other so-called cultural weapons.
From Time Magazine Archive
But as grizzled as Chief Joyi often seemed, the decades fell off him when he spoke of the young impis, or warriors, in the army of King Ngangelizwe fighting the British.
From "Long Walk to Freedom" by Nelson Mandela
Some of the men in the impis winked and grinned at us as we passed.
From "Kaffir Boy: An Autobiography" by Mark Mathabane
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
