kwaito
/ˈkwaɪtoʊ/noun
kwaito is a noun meaning “A style of music featuring words chanted over house music, originating in Johannesburg during the 1990s” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled K-W-A-I-T-O, and it appears about once in every 15 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does kwaito mean?
noun
- 1
A style of music featuring words chanted over house music, originating in Johannesburg during the 1990s.
- 2
The meme or milieu associated with the music style.
Sivuyile is part of the kwaito generation.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce kwaito?
- /ˈkwaɪtoʊ/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is kwaito?
Kwaito appears about once in every 15 million words in written English, the 115,751st 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).
Where does kwaito come from?
From Camtho, from Afrikaans kwaai (“cool”, literally “angry”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).