Noun

(en noun)

A structure that bars passage.

An obstacle or impediment.

* {{quote-magazine, title=Towards the end of poverty

, date=2013-06-01, volume=407, issue=8838, page=11, magazine=(The Economist) citation , passage=America’s poverty line is $63 a day for a family of four. In the richer parts of the emerging world $4 a day is the poverty barrier . But poverty’s scourge is fiercest below $1.25 ([…]): people below that level live lives that are poor, nasty, brutish and short.}}

A boundary or limit.

Noun

(en noun)

A fence, particularly those once commonly improvised in northeastern Africa from thornbushes.

* 1849 , O'Reilly translating Werne, Exped. Sources White Nile , II 112:

A shining seriba of reeds, the stalks of which ... perhaps only afford resistance to tame animals.

* 1895 , A. H. Keane translating W. Junker, Trav. in Afr. , I v 245:

The expression ‘'zeriba country ’ applied by some geographers to the northern slope of the Nile–Congo divide.

(label) An improvised stockade, particularly those similarly located and constructed.

* 1884 Mar. 11, Times , 5:

The Black Watch (Royal Highlanders) advanced this morning to Baker Pasha's zariba .

(label) A camp of troops employing such an enclosure.

* 1887''' Apr. 9, ''Times , 5:

...Forming a zariba , or square, to resist cavalry.

(label) Any wild and barbed barrier, evocative of a briar or thorn patch.

* 1910 , :

Once you had passed the initial zareba of fruit stands, souvenir stands, ice-cream stands, and the lair of the enthusiast whose aim in life it was to sell you picture post-cards, and had won through to the long walk where the seats were, you were practically alone with Nature.

* 1961 , P. G. Wodehouse, Ice in Bedroom , vii. 52:

Owing to his obiter dicta having to be filtered through a zareba of white hair, it was not always easy to catch exactly what Mr. Cornelius said.