Assegai, a slender spear of hard wood, tipped with iron, used in battle by the South African tribes, notably the warlike Zulus. Some assegais are held in the hand and used as spears for thrusting; a shorter kind are hurled from the hand as missiles. The word, originally a Berber name, was adopted by the Moors into Arabic, and thence into Spanish and Portuguese. It was the Portuguese use of it in Africa that passed into English and French.