griot
/ˈɡɹi.oʊ/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: 1.75 in modern English
6
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
2
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A West African storyteller who passes on oral traditions; a wandering musician and poet.
Example Sentences
- "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."
- "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."
- "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."
- "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."
Etymology
Borrowed from French griot.
Origin
- Source language: French
Word Breakdown
- Root: griot, grillot
Usage
Subject
Wiktionary places this term in Music.