matatu

English
WOTD – 1 June 2021

Etymology
Passengers boarding a matatu in Kenya.

Borrowed from Swahili matatu, a clipping of mapeni matatu (“thirty cents”, literally “three ten-cent coins”) (the flat fare paid for such transportation in the 1960s). The word matatu is from ma- (prefix forming plurals) + -tatu (“three”) (from Proto-Bantu *-tátʊ̀ (“three”)).[1]

Pronunciation
  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /məˈtætuː/
  • Audio (Southern England)(file)
  • Audio (Kenya)(file)
  • (General American) IPA(key): /məˈtɑˌtu/
  • Hyphenation: ma‧ta‧tu

Noun

matatu (plural matatus or matatu)

  1. (Kenya, Uganda) A minivan used as a share taxi, especially one operating without a licence.
    Synonyms: (Tanzania) daladala, (Sheng slang) mathree
    • 1982, United Nations Centre for Human Settlements Habitat News:
      A matatu is also more profitable when driven by its owner than by an employed driver, or if the employee-driver pays in all the earnings and the owner meets the operating costs, rather than when the owner demands a fixed sum of money daily, with the operator keeping the surplus.
    • 2010, Philo Ikonya, Leading the Night, page 102:
      For now, matatus made lanes along both sides of tarmac main roads and went over, around or through potholes depending on their speed.
    • 2017, Kenda Mutongi, Matatu: A History of Popular Transportation in Nairobi, page 98:
      Memories of their sense of trepidation, or even the anger, aboard a matatu could still be visceral.
    • 2024 January 13, David Pilling, “Revenge of the moderators”, in FT Weekend, Life & Arts, page 15:
      The roads were jammed with matatu minibuses sporting cartoonish liveries, and trucks billowing black smoke into the dazzling African light.

Hypernyms

Derived terms
  • matatu culture

Translations

See also

References
  1. “matatu, n.”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, December 2018; “matatu, n.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

Further reading

Spanish

Noun

matatu m (plural matatus)

  1. matatu

Swahili

Etymology

From -tatu (“three”), based on the original flat fare of thirty cents in the 1960s.

Pronunciation
  • Audio (Kenya)(file)

Noun

matatu (ma class, plural matatu)

  1. (Kenya) matatu
    Synonyms: (Tanzania) daladala, (Sheng) mathree, (Sheng) moshogi, (Sheng) shedhi

Adjective

matatu

  1. Ma class inflected form of -tatu.
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