In North Africa, a Muslim religious community or its mosque, usually containing the shrine of a holy person.
1836
These lights were not hung merely in honour of the Prophet: they were near a za′wiyeh (or small mosque) in which is buried the sheykh Durwee′sh El-Ashma′wee; and this night was his Moo′lid.
E. W. Lane, Account of Manners & Customs of Modern Egyptiansvol. II. xi. 190
1874
The Djamäa, or rather Zaouia of Abd-er-Rahman eth-Thalebi..contains the tomb of that saint, who died in 1471.
R. L. Playfair, Handbook for Travellers in Algeriaii. 70/2
1911
Kufra..is a centre of the Senūssite brotherhood, whose zawya (convent) at Jof, in Kebabo, ranks in importance with that of Jarabub.
Encyclopædia Britannicavol. XXVII. 289/1
1911
A zawiyah, or ‘hermitage’ was offered him by the Pasha.
D. S. Margoliouth, Mohammedanism v. 184
1924
The sacred colleges of the Moslem fraternities, zaouias, are the scenes of wild, maniacal, religious orgies.
W. M. Sloane, Greater France in Africa viii. 166
1958
The sheikh (this word signifies either the head of a zaouia or of a tribe..) lives close to the zaouia with his family and the devotees.
N. Epton, Saints & Sorcerers ii. 28
1968
The zawias, or houses of learning and worship, were documentation centres where copies of the Koran were prepared for distribution.
T. Blunsum, Libya x. 105
1977
Nefta..a village..whose roof lines are broken by the cupolas of mosques and zaouias.
Times 30 April 11/3
1978
Who was it used to tell reporters I was a zawiya Berber too pious to be seen?
Some consonants can take the function of the vowel in unstressed syllables. Where necessary, a syllabic marker diacritic is used, hence /ˈpɛtl/ but /ˈpɛtl̩i/.
Vowels
iːfleece
ihappy
ɪkit
ɛdress
atrap, bath
ɑːstart, palm, bath
ɒlot
ɔːthought, force
ʌstrut
ʊfoot
uːgoose
əletter
əːnurse
ɪənear
ɛːsquare
ʊəcure
eɪface
ʌɪpride
aʊmouth
əʊgoat
ɔɪvoice
ãgratin
ɒ̃salon
ᵻ(/ɪ/-/ə/)
ᵿ(/ʊ/-/ə/)
Other symbols
The symbol ˈ at the beginning of a syllable indicates that that syllable is pronounced with primary stress.
The symbol ˌ at the beginning of a syllable indicates that that syllable is pronounced with secondary stress.
Round brackets ( ) in a transcription indicate that the symbol within the brackets is optional.
zawiya typically occurs about 0.04 times per million words in modern written English.
zawiya is in frequency band 3, which contains words occurring between 0.01 and 0.1 times per million words in modern written English. More about OED's frequency bands
Frequency data is computed programmatically, and should be regarded as an estimate.
Frequency of zawiya, n., 1850–2010
* Occurrences per million words in written English
Historical frequency series are derived from Google Books Ngrams (version 2), a data set based on the Google Books corpus of several million books printed in English between 1500 and 2010.
The overall frequency for a given word is calculated by summing frequencies for the main form of the word, any plural or inflected forms, and any major spelling variations.
For sets of homographs (distinct entries that share the same word-form, e.g. mole, n.¹, mole, n.², mole, n.³, etc.), we have estimated the frequency of each homograph entry as a fraction of the total Ngrams frequency for the word-form. This may result in inaccuracies.
Smoothing has been applied to series for lower-frequency words, using a moving-average algorithm. This reduces short-term fluctuations, which may be produced by variability in the content of the Google Books corpus.
Decade
Frequency per million words
1850
0.0031
1860
0.0027
1870
0.0023
1880
0.0021
1890
0.0006
1900
0.0007
1910
0.0035
1920
0.0087
1930
0.011
1940
0.018
1950
0.023
1960
0.028
1970
0.034
1980
0.038
1990
0.038
2000
0.041
2010
0.04
zawiya, n. was first published in 1986; not fully revised.