khat
/kɑːt/noun
khat is a noun meaning “A shrub, Catha edulis, whose leaves are used as a mild stimulant when chewed or brewed as tea; also a drug produced from this plant” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled K-H-A-T and has one syllable, and it appears about once in every 6 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of khat is khats.
What does khat mean?
noun
- 1
A shrub, Catha edulis, whose leaves are used as a mild stimulant when chewed or brewed as tea; also a drug produced from this plant.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce khat?
- /kɑːt/
- /kat/
- /kæt/
Khat has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-khat.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of khat
- khats plural
- gat
- kat
- qat
- qhat
- quat
- tschat
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is khat?
Khat appears about once in every 6 million words in written English, the 73,203rd most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Words people confuse with khat
Sounds like: cart (Wiktionary's homophone list; some hold only in some accents).
Also written: kat.
Sources: English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).
Khat in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does khat come from?
Borrowed from Arabic قَات (qāt).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).