Word.ws English Dictionary

niiko

Syllables: nii·koUK/ˈniːkəʊ/US/ˈnikoʊ/

niiko noun: a folk dance from southern Somalia similar to twerking, generally performed by women.

Noun

niiko (uncountable)

  1. A folk dance from southern Somalia similar to twerking, generally performed by women.
    • After decades of war Mogadishu is tentatively relaxing. From sourdough pancakes to traditional bum-shaking Niiko dance and political hip-hop,[…]Xamar has a local dance called Niiko, which is the rhythmic shaking of the bum synchronized with drums.2015 August 24, Sadia Ahmed, Fatuma Abdulahi, “An insider’s guide to Mogadishu: ‘There’s no life without peace’”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 14 Oct 2023
    • Niiko dancing was one of several dimensions of Somali culture that she had actively embraced and enjoyed celebrating and displaying to others.[…]Niiko was a part of her Somali culture and whether it conflicted or not with religion was not a concern for her at that point in time. Interestingly...2018 August 27, Giulia Liberatore, Somali, Muslim, British: Striving in Securitized Britain, Routledge, →ISBN, page 71

Origin of niiko

Borrowed from Somali niiko.

Words that rhyme with niiko

Questions about niiko

What does niiko mean?
Niiko means a folk dance from southern Somalia similar to twerking, generally performed by women.
What part of speech is niiko?
Niiko is a noun.
How do you pronounce niiko?
Niiko is pronounced /ˈniːkəʊ/ (UK).

Words near niiko in the dictionary

  1. Niihau
  2. niiice
  3. Niijima
  4. Niijimas
  5. Niikawa-Kuroki syndrome
  6. niiko
  7. NIISe
  8. Niitsitapi
  9. Niitsítapi
  10. Niiyama
  11. Niiyamas

Source and license

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