Word.ws English Dictionary

nkisi

nkisi noun: a spirit, or an object inhabited by a spirit, in Bantu religious beliefs.

nkisi: a spirit, or an object inhabited by a spirit, in Bantu religious beliefs
Image: Bin im Garten, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

nkisi (plural nkisis or minkisi)

  1. A spirit, or an object inhabited by a spirit, in Bantu religious beliefs.

Forms of nkisi

pluralnkisis
pluralminkisi
alternative formnkishi

Origin of nkisi

Borrowed from Kongo nkisi (“spirit; charm”).

Questions about nkisi

What does nkisi mean?
Nkisi means a spirit, or an object inhabited by a spirit, in Bantu religious beliefs.
What part of speech is nkisi?
Nkisi is a noun.
What is the plural of nkisi?
The plural of nkisi is nkisis.

Words near nkisi in the dictionary

  1. nkhokwes
  2. Nkimi
  3. Nkinora
  4. nkishi
  5. nkishis
  6. nkisi
  7. nkisis
  8. NKJV
  9. Nko
  10. Nkole
  11. Nkore

Source and license

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