Griot

//ˈɡɹi.oʊ// noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A West African storyteller who passes on oral traditions; a wandering musician and poet.

    "Griots may be the chroniclers of an important family or of a group of people — like the Bambara hunters’ griot — or itinerant poets and musicians who extol the praises of the person who has hired them for a special festivity."

  2. 2
    A Haitian dish of fried pork. countable, uncountable
  3. 3
    a storyteller in West Africa; perpetuates the oral traditions of a family or village wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
jeli

Example

More examples

"Griots may be the chroniclers of an important family or of a group of people — like the Bambara hunters’ griot — or itinerant poets and musicians who extol the praises of the person who has hired them for a special festivity."

Etymology

Etymology 1

Borrowed from French griot.

Etymology 2

French griot

More for "griot"

SynonymsSentencesPronunciationTranslate

Next best steps

Find stronger synonymsSee usage examplesCheck pronunciationBrowse writing guides

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.