braai

/ˈbɹaɪ̯/

braai noun: a barbecue (grill), especially an open outdoor grill built specifically for the purpose of braaing.

Noun

braai (countable and uncountable, plural braais)

(South Africa) A barbecue (grill), especially an open outdoor grill built specifically for the purpose of braaing.
(Botswana, South Africa, Zimbabwe) A social meeting including the braaing of meat; a cookout.
- Come over to our place for a braai.
(uncountable) Meat cooked by this method.

braai (third-person singular simple present braais, present participle braaing or braaiing, simple past and past participle braaied)

(South Africa, ambitransitive) To grill meat over an open flame (not on a gas grill).
- […] so we decide to braai some ribs for supper.2015 June 1, Pamela Power, Ms Conception, Penguin Random House South Africa, →ISBN
- You sniff the air. Smoke. Spices. One of the residents on the road has been, or perhaps is still, braaing.2018, Tsitsi Dangarembga, This Mournable Body, Faber & Faber (2020), page 89

Noun
plural	braais
Verb
third-person singular present	braais
present participle	braaing
present participle	braaiing
past participle	braaied
past	braaied

Borrowed from Afrikaans braai (“to grill”), from Dutch braden (“roast”).

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

What does braai mean?: Braai means a barbecue (grill), especially an open outdoor grill built specifically for the purpose of braaing.
What part of speech is braai?: Braai can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce braai?: Braai is pronounced /ˈbɹaɪ̯/.
What is the plural of braai?: The plural of braai is braais.

Adapted from Wiktionary: braai (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-braai.ogg.

Cite this entry: “braai.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/braai. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.