Word.ws English Dictionary

kennetjie

kennetjie noun: a children’s (boy’s) game where a short stick is flipped into the air by a longer stick, batted and hopefully caught by ‘fielders’.

Noun

kennetjie (uncountable)

  1. (South Africa) A children’s (boy’s) game where a short stick is flipped into the air by a longer stick, batted and hopefully caught by ‘fielders’.
    • The two men are playing a Boer sport called kennetjie, using a length of broomstick as the bat, on which is balanced a small piece of wood that serves as the 'ball'.2008, Christopher Hope, My Mother's Lovers, page 186
    • Instead we played kennetjie in the yard with a small piece of wood, which we flipped with a stick, and struck into the air.2010, Rayda Jacobs, Sachs Street, page 135
  2. (South Africa) The short stick used in this game.
    • A strong, three feet long stick (the bat or hook) and a shorter piece five or six inches long (the kennetjie) were the requirements. A deep gash six inches in length was scraped in the ground. The kennetjie was laid cross-wise over the gash.2006, Louis Mallett, The history of the people of Malay Camp, Kimberley

Origin of kennetjie

Borrowed from Afrikaans kennetjie (“little chin”).

Questions about kennetjie

What does kennetjie mean?
Kennetjie means a children’s (boy’s) game where a short stick is flipped into the air by a longer stick, batted and hopefully caught by ‘fielders’.
What part of speech is kennetjie?
Kennetjie is a noun.

Words near kennetjie in the dictionary

  1. kennet
  2. Kenneth
  3. Kennethmont
  4. Kenneths
  5. kennetic
  6. kennetjie
  7. kennets
  8. Kennett
  9. Kennett River
  10. Kennetts
  11. Kennewick

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: kennetjie (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: “kennetjie.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/kennetjie. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.