Beduin

Part of speech: noun, adjective

Definitions

1. A member of a nomadic Arab people who traditionally live by herding animals across the deserts of North Africa and the Middle East
2. An Arab tribesman who roams the desert regions of the Middle East and North Africa with livestock, moving from place to place
3. Someone from a nomadic desert people of Arabia and North Africa who has historically traveled with camels, sheep or goats in search of pasture

Etymology: "Beduin" is simply an older spelling of "bedouin," the word for a nomadic desert herder. The spelling reflects how English speakers borrowed the term: it came into English from French "bédouin," which itself was taken from Arabic, where the word refers to the desert-dwelling Arab tribes of the Syrian and Arabian deserts. The Arabic root connects to the idea of living in the open desert, rather than in towns. English writers tended to spell the word variously over the centuries, and "beduin" was one of the forms that appeared in print before the spelling settled on "bedouin." Today "bedouin" is the standard form, while "beduin" is marked as dated, so you will mostly meet it in older books and texts.