Word.ws English Dictionary

manyatta

manyatta noun: a Masai or Samburu settlement or compound, often temporary, established by a family or clan, or as an encampment of young warriors.

manyatta: a Masai or Samburu settlement or compound, often temporary, established by a family or clan, or as...
Image: Brutere, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

manyatta (plural manyattas)

  1. (Africa, East) A Masai or Samburu settlement or compound, often temporary, established by a family or clan, or as an encampment of young warriors.
    • The Masai tribes, or sections of tribes, haunt certain districts. Every section has usually some three favourite districts, in each of which is a village called a manyatta.1901, Sidney Langford Hinde, The Last of the Masai
    • All of the inhabitants worked together for two full moon cycles to build their manyattas, bomas for the cows and a fence that spanned the length of two big football pitches to protect everyone from the lions.2012, Jackson Ntirkana, Wilson Meikuaya, The Last Maasai Warriors: An Autobiography

Forms of manyatta

pluralmanyattas

Origin of manyatta

Borrowed from Maasai manyatta.

Questions about manyatta

What does manyatta mean?
Manyatta means a Masai or Samburu settlement or compound, often temporary, established by a family or clan, or as an encampment of young warriors.
What part of speech is manyatta?
Manyatta is a noun.
What is the plural of manyatta?
The plural of manyatta is manyattas.

Words near manyatta in the dictionary

  1. Manyas shemaya
  2. Manyas shemayas
  3. manyat
  4. manyata
  5. manyatas
  6. manyatta
  7. manyattas
  8. manycore
  9. manye
  10. Manyema
  11. manyfaceted

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: manyatta (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.

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