kumbaya
US/ˌkum.baɪˈjɑ/
kumbaya noun: used to evoke spiritual unity and interpersonal harmony, with varying degrees of sincerity or sarcasm, as referring to the folk song.
Noun (1)
kumbaya
- Used to evoke spiritual unity and interpersonal harmony, with varying degrees of sincerity or sarcasm, as referring to the folk song.
- Dr. Hoffman told me the word kumbaya was originally an African American spiritual, a song that was also a prayer asking for divine intervention, asking for help in dire times, and that then the hippies in the sixties took it and sang it to mean unity amid protest, and then it got played out and...2024, Tommy Orange, Wandering Stars, Harvill Secker, page 163
Noun (2) capitalized: Kumbaya
Kumbaya
- Alternative letter-case form of kumbaya.
- But the rise of multiracialism is not all Kumbaya choruses and “postracial” identity. The N.A.A.C.P. criticized the census change, fearing that since so few in the black community are of fully African descent, mass attrition to a mixed-race option could threaten political clout and Federal...2008 March 23, Peggy Orenstein, “Mixed Messenger”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 06 Nov 2020
Forms of kumbaya
| alternative form | kum ba yah |
|---|---|
| alternative form | kumbayah |
| alternative form | Kumbaya |
Origin of kumbaya
From Gullah. Apparently a corruption of the English phrase “come by here” in a spiritual song.
Words formed from kumbaya
Phrases with kumbaya
Questions about kumbaya
- What does kumbaya mean?
- Kumbaya means used to evoke spiritual unity and interpersonal harmony, with varying degrees of sincerity or sarcasm, as referring to the folk song.
- What part of speech is kumbaya?
- Kumbaya is a noun.
- How do you pronounce kumbaya?
- Kumbaya is pronounced /ˌkum.baɪˈjɑ/ (US).
Words near kumbaya in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: kumbaya (page history and authors); Kumbaya (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: “kumbaya.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/kumbaya. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.