Swahili Definition

swä-hēlē
swahili
noun
A member of a people living on Zanzibar and the nearby mainland.
Webster's New World
The Northern Bantu language of this people, characterized by a vocabulary with many Arabic roots and used as a lingua franca in EC Africa and parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Webster's New World
An inhabitant of coastal eastern Africa for whom Swahili is the mother tongue.
American Heritage
pronoun

An agglutinative language widely spoken in East Africa. Born of the hybridization of the Arabic and Bantu cultures, it was the language of the traders in East Africa, and spread along the routes of trade.

Wiktionary

Origin of Swahili

  • Swahili from Arabic sawāḥilī of the coasts from sawāḥil pl. of sāḥil coast active participle of saḥala to scrape off, smooth šḥl in Semitic roots

    From American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition

  • From Swahili swahili, from plural of Arabic ساحل (sāḥil, “coast").

    From Wiktionary

Swahili Sentence Examples

  • The surrounding region has been overrun by Arabs and Swahili from the East African coast.

  • This well-known Arab term for coast-belt (which in the plural form reappears as the familiar "Swahili" of Zanzibar) is applied to a third division of Tunisia, viz.

  • Dating back to the 13th century, much of the Swahili structures are still intact, including mosques and a former sultan 's palace.

  • Another Star Trek publication suggested her first name is "Penda", a Swahili verb-ending that means "to love".

  • In its plural form, Swahili, the word has become the tribal name of the natives inhabiting the coast strip opposite Zanzibar.

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