Gnawa
noun
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 Any member of an ethnic group and Sufi religious order in Morocco.
Etymology
From Arabic غَنَاوَة (ḡanāwa). The name appears to originate from the Saharan Berber dialect word aguinaw (or agenaou) (Arabic أݣناو), meaning black (men), perhaps itself derived from the name of a city significant in the 11th century, in what is now western Mali, called Gana, in Arabic Ghana or Jenna and in Portuguese and later French Guinea or Jenné.
Related phrases
More for "gnawa"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.