Duafe (wooden comb)
Duafe, the wooden comb, is the adinkra symbol of beauty and cleanliness.
Meaning
Duafe is an Akan symbol from Ghana, stamped on adinkra cloth. J. E. T. Kuwornu-Adjaottor, George Appiah and Melvin Nartey of KNUST translate it as “Wooden comb” and give its meaning as “Fondness for cleanliness and natural beauty”. Wooden combs, they write, were used mostly by women to comb and plait their hair, and are among the most cherished things in a house: a duafe, given by the fiancé, is one of the things a girl needs for her puberty rites, with beads, cloth, sandals, a stool, a mirror and shea butter. The design-tools table at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute gives “Beauty, hygiene, feminine qualities”.
Read next
- Next in Adinkra symbolsGye NyameGye Nyame means “except God”. It is the adinkra symbol of the supremacy of God, from the Akan of Ghana.
- The same shape in Greek gods and their symbolsApolloApollo’s symbols are the lyre and the bow, the two things the newborn god claims in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo. The laurel was his tree: it crowned his head, and his oracle at Delphi spoke “from his laurel tree”.
See also
Nyame Dua, Nsoromma (star), Osram ne Nsoromma (moon and star), Sankofa, Sankofa (heart), Mate Masie.
Sources
- The philosophy behind some Adinkra symbols (Kuwornu-Adjaottor et al. 2016), J. E. T. Kuwornu-Adjaottor, George Appiah and Melvin Nartey (Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology), “The philosophy behind some Adinkra symbols and their communicative values in Akan”, Philosophical Papers and Review 7, no. 3 (2016): 22–33, doi:10.5897/PPR2015.0117, Academic Journals, Some unfamiliar Adinkra symbols: Duafe
- Adinkra Symbols (Culturally Situated Design Tools), Culturally Situated Design Tools (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, with the National Science Foundation), “Adinkra: Symbols”, Culturally Situated Design Tools, table of symbols
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from lines.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
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