"Kwanzaa" meaning in English

See Kwanzaa in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Proper name

IPA: /ˈkwɑnzə/ Forms: Kwanzaas [plural]
Etymology: Coined by Maulana Karenga from the Swahili phrase matunda ya kwanza (“first fruits”). The additional “a” was added to “Kwanza” so that the word would have seven letters, one for each of the Seven Principles of Blackness. Etymology templates: {{coin|en|Maulana Karenga|nobycat=1}} Coined by Maulana Karenga, {{bor|en|sw|-}} Swahili Head templates: {{en-proper noun|s}} Kwanzaa (plural Kwanzaas)
  1. A week-long African-American cultural holiday held between December 26 and January 1. Categories (topical): Holidays Derived forms: happy Kwanzaa

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for Kwanzaa meaning in English (2.8kB)

{
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "Maulana Karenga",
        "nobycat": "1"
      },
      "expansion": "Coined by Maulana Karenga",
      "name": "coin"
    },
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "sw",
        "3": "-"
      },
      "expansion": "Swahili",
      "name": "bor"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "Coined by Maulana Karenga from the Swahili phrase matunda ya kwanza (“first fruits”). The additional “a” was added to “Kwanza” so that the word would have seven letters, one for each of the Seven Principles of Blackness.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "Kwanzaas",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "s"
      },
      "expansion": "Kwanzaa (plural Kwanzaas)",
      "name": "en-proper noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "name",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
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          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with topic categories using raw markup",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with topic categories using raw markup",
            "Entry maintenance"
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          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English quotations with omitted translation",
          "parents": [
            "Quotations with omitted translation",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Holidays",
          "orig": "en:Holidays",
          "parents": [
            "Observances",
            "Calendar",
            "Timekeeping",
            "Time",
            "All topics",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "derived": [
        {
          "word": "happy Kwanzaa"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1983 December 30, Ron Alexander, “The Evening Hours”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, page B7",
          "text": "On Tuesday night at the Club Serene in Brooklyn, Mayor Koch proclaimed Kwanzaa Week in New York. Then he told the crowd of about 400 that he had practiced his Swahili in order to pronounce correctly such exotic-sounding words as kujichagulia (self-determination), ujamaa (cooperative economics) and imani (faith), the theme of Kwanzaa '83.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1997 January 5, Maureen Dowd, “WASP's Bite Back”, in The New York Times, →ISSN",
          "text": "But now, WASP's want their place in the multicultural sun. Social rituals are social rituals. If there is Kwanzaa, why not cotillions?",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2021 January 30, Christina Morales, “A 10-Year-Old GameStop Investor Cashed In. His Return? Over 5,000%”, in The New York Times, →ISSN",
          "text": "Spying a way to use her son’s enthusiasm for video games to teach him about investing, Jaydyn’s mother, Nina Carr, decided to invest in 10 shares of GameStop at $6.19 a share for a Kwanzaa gift.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A week-long African-American cultural holiday held between December 26 and January 1."
      ],
      "id": "en-Kwanzaa-en-name-F0tgJ9pv",
      "links": [
        [
          "African-American",
          "African-American"
        ],
        [
          "holiday",
          "holiday"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "ipa": "/ˈkwɑnzə/"
    }
  ],
  "word": "Kwanzaa"
}
{
  "derived": [
    {
      "word": "happy Kwanzaa"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "Maulana Karenga",
        "nobycat": "1"
      },
      "expansion": "Coined by Maulana Karenga",
      "name": "coin"
    },
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "sw",
        "3": "-"
      },
      "expansion": "Swahili",
      "name": "bor"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "Coined by Maulana Karenga from the Swahili phrase matunda ya kwanza (“first fruits”). The additional “a” was added to “Kwanza” so that the word would have seven letters, one for each of the Seven Principles of Blackness.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "Kwanzaas",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "s"
      },
      "expansion": "Kwanzaa (plural Kwanzaas)",
      "name": "en-proper noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "name",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English 2-syllable words",
        "English coinages",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English entries with topic categories using raw markup",
        "English lemmas",
        "English proper nouns",
        "English quotations with omitted translation",
        "English terms borrowed from Swahili",
        "English terms derived from Swahili",
        "English terms with IPA pronunciation",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English uncountable nouns",
        "en:Holidays"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1983 December 30, Ron Alexander, “The Evening Hours”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, page B7",
          "text": "On Tuesday night at the Club Serene in Brooklyn, Mayor Koch proclaimed Kwanzaa Week in New York. Then he told the crowd of about 400 that he had practiced his Swahili in order to pronounce correctly such exotic-sounding words as kujichagulia (self-determination), ujamaa (cooperative economics) and imani (faith), the theme of Kwanzaa '83.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1997 January 5, Maureen Dowd, “WASP's Bite Back”, in The New York Times, →ISSN",
          "text": "But now, WASP's want their place in the multicultural sun. Social rituals are social rituals. If there is Kwanzaa, why not cotillions?",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2021 January 30, Christina Morales, “A 10-Year-Old GameStop Investor Cashed In. His Return? Over 5,000%”, in The New York Times, →ISSN",
          "text": "Spying a way to use her son’s enthusiasm for video games to teach him about investing, Jaydyn’s mother, Nina Carr, decided to invest in 10 shares of GameStop at $6.19 a share for a Kwanzaa gift.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A week-long African-American cultural holiday held between December 26 and January 1."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "African-American",
          "African-American"
        ],
        [
          "holiday",
          "holiday"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "ipa": "/ˈkwɑnzə/"
    }
  ],
  "word": "Kwanzaa"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-25 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (bb24e0f and c7ea76d). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.