Kwanzaa
/ˈkwɑnzə/
Kwanzaa proper noun: a week-long African-American cultural holiday held between December 26 and January 1.
Proper noun
Kwanzaa (plural Kwanzaas)
- A week-long African-American cultural holiday held between December 26 and January 1.
- On Tuesday night at the Club Serene in Brooklyn, Mayor Koch proclaimed Kwanzaa Week in New York. Then he told the crowd of about 400 that he had practiced his Swahili in order to pronounce correctly such exotic-sounding words as kujichagulia (self-determination), ujamaa (cooperative economics) and...1983 December 30, Ron Alexander, “The Evening Hours”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, archived from the original on 03 Jan 2022, page B7
- But now, WASP's want their place in the multicultural sun. Social rituals are social rituals. If there is Kwanzaa, why not cotillions?1997 January 5, Maureen Dowd, “WASP's Bite Back”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, archived from the original on 24 Jan 2022
Examples of Kwanzaa in a sentence
- On Tuesday night at the Club Serene in Brooklyn, Mayor Koch proclaimed Kwanzaa Week in New York.1983 December 30, Ron Alexander, “The Evening Hours”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, archived from the original on 03 Jan 2022, page B7:
- Spying a way to use her son’s enthusiasm for video games to teach him about investing, Jaydyn’s mother, Nina Carr, decided to invest in 10 shares of GameStop at $6.19 a share for a Kwanzaa gift.2021 January 30, Christina Morales, “A 10-Year-Old GameStop Investor Cashed In. His Return? Over 5,000%”, in The New York Times, →ISSN...
Forms of Kwanzaa
| plural | Kwanzaas |
|---|
Origin of Kwanzaa
Coined by Maulana Karenga from the Swahili phrase matunda ya kwanza (“first fruits”). The additional “a” was added to “Kwanza” so that the word would have seven letters, one for each of the Seven Principles of Blackness.
Words formed from Kwanzaa
Questions about Kwanzaa
- What does Kwanzaa mean?
- Kwanzaa means a week-long African-American cultural holiday held between December 26 and January 1.
- How do you use Kwanzaa in a sentence?
- On Tuesday night at the Club Serene in Brooklyn, Mayor Koch proclaimed Kwanzaa Week in New York.
- What part of speech is Kwanzaa?
- Kwanzaa is a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce Kwanzaa?
- Kwanzaa is pronounced /ˈkwɑnzə/.
Words near Kwanzaa in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: Kwanzaa (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)-Flame, not lame-Kwanzaa.wav.
Cite this entry: “Kwanzaa.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/kwanzaa. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.