What does "rebetiko" mean?

A Greek urban folk song, characterised by lyrics about underworld activity, and played generally on stringed instruments including the bouzouki.

Rebetiko

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Noun

1
A Greek urban folk song, characterised by lyrics about underworld activity, and played generally on stringed instruments including the bouzouki. countable, uncountable
"I need another player to put a Greek melody over the top, perhaps a rebetiko of some sort."
2
This style of music; such music as a genre. countable, in-plural, uncountable
"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."

"I need another player to put a Greek melody over the top, perhaps a rebetiko of some sort."

Borrowed from Greek ρεμπέτικο (rempétiko, “rebetiko”).

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