1790, from Arabic kafir "unbeliever, infidel, impious wretch," with a literal sense of "one who does not admit the blessings of God," from kafara "to cover up, conceal, deny, blot out." Technically, "non-Muslim," but in Ottoman times it came to be used almost exclusively for "Christian." Early English missionaries used it as an equivalent of "heathen" to refer to Bantus in South Africa (1792), from which use it came generally to mean "South African black" regardless of ethnicity, and to be a term of abuse since at least 1934.
双语例句
1. The direct ancestor of the modern cat was the Kaffir cat of ancient Egypt.
现代猫的直系原种是古埃及的卡菲尔猫。
来自柯林斯例句
2. Boil the thin coconut milk with lemon grass , kaffir leaves, shallot and galanga.