Xhosa

//ˈkəʊ.sə// adj, noun

adj, noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A member of a Bantu people from South Africa, most of whom live in the Eastern Cape. countable

    "my father remained aloof from Christianity and instead reserved his own faith for the great spirit of the Xhosas, Qamata, the God of his fathers."

  2. 2
    a Bantu language closely related to Zulu, it is the second most common home language in South Africa wordnet
  3. 3
    The language of these people, a Bantu language related to Zulu. uncountable

    "“With the food packages that we drop off, we are adding messages in the local dialect of Xhosa, because this is predominately for the Xhosa areas,” Kolisi said."

  4. 4
    a member of the Negroid people of southern South Africa wordnet
Adjective
  1. 1
    Of or pertaining to the Xhosa people.
  2. 2
    Of or pertaining to the Xhosa language.

Synonyms

All synonyms
englishlanguagexhosa language

Example

More examples

"The Republic of South Africa’s official languages are: Afrikaans, English, Northern Sotho, Sesotho, Southern Ndebele, Swazi, Tsonga, Tswana, Venda, Xhosa, and Zulu."

Etymology

Borrowed from Xhosa (ísí)Xhosa (“Xhosa language”) and (úḿ)Xhosa (“Xhosa person”).

Related phrases

eastern capesouth africa

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