rebetiko
rebetiko noun: a Greek urban folk song, characterised by lyrics about underworld activity, and played generally on stringed instruments including the bouzouki.
Noun
rebetiko (countable and uncountable, plural rebetika)
- A Greek urban folk song, characterised by lyrics about underworld activity, and played generally on stringed instruments including the bouzouki.
- I need another player to put a Greek melody over the top, perhaps a rebetiko of some sort.1994, Louis de Bernières, Captain Corelli's Mandolin
- This style of music; such music as a genre.
- At the time, these earliest songs of the rebetika tradition were a symptom and a particular manifestation of a wider climate of violence, criminality and despair, whether real or imagined, that permeated the Greek capital around the turn of the century.2019, Roderick Beaton, Greece: Biography of a Modern Nation, Penguin, published 2020, page 172
Forms of rebetiko
| plural | rebetika |
|---|---|
| alternative form | rembetiko |
Origin of rebetiko
Borrowed from Greek ρεμπέτικο (rempétiko, “rebetiko”).
Questions about rebetiko
- What does rebetiko mean?
- Rebetiko means a Greek urban folk song, characterised by lyrics about underworld activity, and played generally on stringed instruments including the bouzouki.
- What part of speech is rebetiko?
- Rebetiko is a noun.
- What is the plural of rebetiko?
- The plural of rebetiko is rebetika.
Words near rebetiko in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: rebetiko (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: “rebetiko.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/rebetiko. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.