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.
Source: wiktionary
Griot
//ˈɡɹi.oʊ//
Synonyms for "griot" (1 found)
Ranked by relevance and common usage.
Closest matches (1)
Noun(1 words)
Related word relations
OpenGloss and ConceptNet supply richer edges like generalizations, collocations, and derivations.
Translations
13 translations across 8 languages.
Baatonum
1 entries- bàrɔ noun (West African storyteller, musician and poet)
French
3 entries- griot noun (West African storyteller, musician and poet)
- griot noun (Haitian dish of fried pork)
- griotte noun (West African storyteller, musician and poet)
German
1 entries- Griot noun (West African storyteller, musician and poet)
Haitian Creole
1 entries- griyo noun (Haitian dish of fried pork)
Japanese
1 entries- グリオ noun (West African storyteller, musician and poet)
Portuguese
1 entries- griô noun (West African storyteller, musician and poet)
Wolof
3 entries- géwal noun (West African storyteller, musician and poet)
- géwél noun (West African storyteller, musician and poet)
- géwël noun (West African storyteller, musician and poet)
Yoruba
2 entries- àrọ̀kin noun (West African storyteller, musician and poet)
- ọ̀pálábà noun (West African storyteller, musician and poet)
Sample sentences
4 total sentences available.
When ethnographers are asked to read their works to gatherings of Songhay, elders, they, too, are considered griots. Ethnographers, however, usually consider themselves scholars, not griots. They prepare themselves for their life's work in a manner altogether different from that of the griot.
Source: wiktionary
I decided that it would be better for a griot to take us back into the legend, rather than me, a contemporary man. Griots have deeply marked me. I already narrated my first film, Ta Dona, in the same way that a griot would have.
Source: wiktionary
Yet the critics of writing weren’t entirely wrong. In oral cultures, bards carried epics in their heads; griots could reel off centuries of genealogy on demand.
Source: wiktionary
Keep exploring
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.