Kaross - Encyclopedia

GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES

KAROSS, a cloak made of sheepskin, or the hide of other animals, with the hair left on. It is properly confined to the coat of skin without sleeves worn by the Hottentots and Bushmen of South Africa. These karosses are now often replaced by a blanket. Their chiefs wore karosses of the skin of the wild cat, leopard or caracal. The word is also loosely applied to the cloaks of leopard-skin worn by the chiefs and principal men of the Kaffir tribes. Kaross is probably either a genuine Hottentot word, or else an adaptation of the Dutch kuras (Portuguese couraca), a cuirass. In a vocabulary dated 1673 karos is described as a "corrupt Dutch word."