Word.ws English Dictionary

morena

UK/məˈɹeɪnə/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

General South African/mɔˈɹenə/

morena noun: someone in authority, a master or leader, especially among Sotho-speakers.

Noun

morena (plural morenas or marena)

  1. (South Africa) Someone in authority, a master or leader, especially among Sotho-speakers.
    • ‘Morena,’ said the old priest, ‘don't be angry with the boy.’1979, André Brink, A Dry White Season, Vintage, published 1998, page 93

Proper noun capitalized: Morena

Morena (plural Morenas)

  1. A surname.
  2. A district of Madhya Pradesh, India.

Forms of morena

Noun
pluralmorenas
pluralmarena
Proper noun
pluralMorenas

Origin of morena

Borrowed from Sotho morena, Northern Sotho morena, Tswana morena, from mo- (personal class prefix) + rena (“to be rich, to be a leader”).

Questions about morena

What does morena mean?
Morena means someone in authority, a master or leader, especially among Sotho-speakers.
What part of speech is morena?
Morena can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce morena?
Morena is pronounced /mɔˈɹenə/ (General South African).
What is the plural of morena?
The plural of morena is morenas.

Words near morena in the dictionary

  1. Morelocks
  2. Morelos
  3. morels
  4. Moremi
  5. moremover
  6. morena
  7. morenas
  8. Morency
  9. Morencys
  10. morendo
  11. morendos

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: morena (page history and authors); Morena (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: “morena.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/morena. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.