Kwanzaa

//ˈkwɑnzə// name

name ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    a festival featuring African-American culture; celebrated between Christmas and New Year wordnet
Proper Noun
  1. 1
    A week-long African-American cultural holiday held between December 26 and January 1.

    "On Tuesday night at the Club Serene in Brooklyn, Mayor Koch proclaimed Kwanzaa Week in New York. Then he told the crowd of about 400 that he had practiced his Swahili in order to pronounce correctly such exotic-sounding words as kujichagulia (self-determination), ujamaa (cooperative economics) and imani (faith), the theme of Kwanzaa '83."

Synonyms

All synonyms
festivuskwanzapan africanism

Example

More examples

"Kwanzaa is celebrated from December 26 to January 1."

Etymology

Coined by Maulana Karenga from the Swahili phrase matunda ya kwanza (“first fruits”). The additional “a” was added to “Kwanza” so that the word would have seven letters, one for each of the Seven Principles of Blackness.

Related phrases

happy Kwanzaaafrican american

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