Word.ws English Dictionary

jembe

jembe is the alternative spelling of djembe.

Meaning of djembe

Noun

djembe (plural djembes)

  1. A large, rope-tuned, skin-covered drum played with the bare hands, used in West African and some fusion music.
    • There are three principal types of traditional drums in Guinean Sousou culture: the djembe, the dundun, and the tama. The djembe is a single-headed goblet-shaped drum with a relatively high-pitched tone.2007, Karin Gaynell Patterson, Expressions of Africa in Los Angeles Public Performance, 1781—1994, page 133

Noun

jembe (plural jembes)

  1. (Kenya) A kind of hoe (digging tool).
    • How many jembes do the people of your village buy per year?1993, Samuel M. Wamae, How to Win in the Coming Jua Kali Boom, page 142

Forms of jembe

pluraljembes

Origin of jembe

Borrowed from Swahili jembe, from Proto-Bantu *ìgèmbè.

Questions about jembe

What does jembe mean?
Jembe means a kind of hoe (digging tool).
What is jembe the alternative spelling of?
Jembe is the alternative spelling of djembe.
What part of speech is jembe?
Jembe is a noun.
What is the plural of jembe?
The plural of jembe is jembes.

Words near jembe in the dictionary

  1. Jemalong
  2. Jemappes
  3. jemautdar
  4. jemautdars
  5. Jembaicumbene
  6. jembe
  7. jembes
  8. Jembrana
  9. Jeme
  10. Jemelle
  11. Jemez

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: jembe (page history and authors); djembe (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:

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