Word.ws English Dictionary

calypso

/kəˈlɪp.səʊ/US/kəˈlɪp.soʊ/

calypso noun: a style of Afro-Caribbean music that originated in Trinidad and Tobago during the early to the mid-19th century and spread to the rest of the Caribbean Antilles and Venezuela by the mid-20th century.

calypso: a style of Afro-Caribbean music that originated in Trinidad and Tobago during the early to the...
Image: Jason Hollinger, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

calypso (countable and uncountable, plural calypsos or calypsoes)

  1. A style of Afro-Caribbean music that originated in Trinidad and Tobago during the early to the mid-19th century and spread to the rest of the Caribbean Antilles and Venezuela by the mid-20th century.
    • 'How you does live, Mr. Wordsworth?' I asked him one day.
      He said, 'You mean how I get money?'
      When I nodded, he laughed in a crooked way.
      He said, 'I sing calypsoes in the calypso season.'
      'And that last you the rest of the year?'
      'It is enough.'1959, V. S. Naipaul, “B. Wordsworth”, in Miguel Street
  2. A song in this style of music.

Verb

calypso (third-person singular simple present calypsos, present participle calypsoing, simple past and past participle calypsoed)

  1. (intransitive) To perform calypso.

Noun (2)

calypso (countable and uncountable, plural calypsos or calypsoes)

  1. A bulbous bog orchid of the genus Calypso, Calypso bulbosa
  2. A light blue color.

Proper noun capitalized: Calypso

Calypso

  1. (Greek) A sea nymph who entertained Odysseus on her island, Ogygia, for seven years.
  2. The eighth moon of Saturn.
  3. 53 Kalypso, a main belt asteroid; not to be confused with the Saturnian moon mentioned above.
  4. Alternative letter-case form of calypso.

Forms of calypso

Noun
pluralcalypsos
pluralcalypsoes
Verb
third-person singular presentcalypsos
present participlecalypsoing
past participlecalypsoed
pastcalypsoed

Plural of calypso: calypsos or calypsoes

Origin of calypso

Originally Trinidad English, an alteration of kaiso, perhaps ultimately of African origin; Allsopp 1996 suggests Ibibio ka iso (“come on”), used to urge dancers on. The spelling reflects a later folk-etymological assimilation with the mythological name Calypso.

From Latin, itself from Ancient Greek Καλυψώ (Kalupsṓ, “name of a sea nymph”)

From Ancient Greek Κᾰλῠψώ (Kălŭpsṓ).

Words formed from calypso

Phrases with calypso

Words that rhyme with calypso

Questions about calypso

What does calypso mean?
Calypso means a style of Afro-Caribbean music that originated in Trinidad and Tobago during the early to the mid-19th century and spread to the rest of the Caribbean Antilles and Venezuela by the mid-20th century.
What part of speech is calypso?
Calypso can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce calypso?
Calypso is pronounced /kəˈlɪp.səʊ/ (UK).
What is the plural of calypso?
The plural of calypso is calypsos.

Words near calypso in the dictionary

  1. calyons
  2. calyoon
  3. calyoons
  4. calypses
  5. calypsis
  6. calypso
  7. calypso coffee
  8. calypso coffees
  9. calypso-like
  10. Calypsoan
  11. calypsoed

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: calypso (page history and authors); Calypso (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-calypso.wav.

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