Word.ws English Dictionary

wasta

wasta noun: intercession or mediation by people on behalf of others to whom they are connected by friendship or blood.

Noun

wasta (plural wastas)

  1. (Arab society, often italicized) Intercession or mediation by people on behalf of others to whom they are connected by friendship or blood
    • The number of those traveling to the US during summer may definitely have gone down, but if one can hook onto a wasta, one could get into the queue of applicants without having to get up early in the morning.2003 June 15, Syed Rashid Husain, “'Wasta' at US Embassy”, in Arab News

Synonyms of wasta

Forms of wasta

pluralwastas

Origin of wasta

Borrowed from Arabic وَاسِطَة (wāsiṭa).

Questions about wasta

What does wasta mean?
Wasta means intercession or mediation by people on behalf of others to whom they are connected by friendship or blood.
What part of speech is wasta?
Wasta is a noun.
What is the plural of wasta?
The plural of wasta is wastas.

Words near wasta in the dictionary

  1. wassonite
  2. wassup
  3. wassy
  4. wast
  5. Wast Water
  6. wasta
  7. wastable
  8. wastage
  9. wastages
  10. wastas
  11. wastcote

Source and license

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