kumbaya

adjective

kum·​ba·​ya ˌküm-bä-'yä How to pronounce kumbaya (audio)
-bī-
variants or less commonly Kumbaya
: characterized by or exhibiting a belief in harmony between people and in their essential goodness
"We're not all gonna live in a perfect kumbaya society but we can make it better by working and by reaching out, and by assuming the best in each other. And if enough of us do that, we move that boulder up the hill," [Barack] Obama said on Friday.—Katherine Fung
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov also glossed over the Russian-backed separatist movement that sparked the conflict that persists in Ukraine. "Sport is sport," Peskov, having a kumbaya moment, told journalists Monday. "We need to be above inciting hatred between Russians and Ukrainians."—Elliot Hannon

Examples of kumbaya in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web There are seasons that are very kumbaya, very that, and then there are seasons that get kind of real. —Joey Nolfi, EW.com, 30 Apr. 2023

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'kumbaya.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

Etymology

from the title and refrain of the spiritual "Kumbaya," taken as emblematic of harmony and unity, from its use as a youth campfire song and as a sing-along number during performances of folk music

Note: The early documentation of the spiritual is recounted in "The World's First 'Kumbaya Moment': New Evidence about an Old Song," by Stephen Winick of the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress (Folklife Center News, vol. 32, nos. 3-4, summer/fall, 2010, pp. 3-10). The title and refrain are rendered "Come by Here" in a transcription of a version of the song without music made in 1926, though when the spiritual became popular in the 1950's the title was rendered "Kum Ba Yah" or "Kumbaya," which went along with a tradition that it had an African connection. The earliest aural evidence is \kəm bī ˈyä\ [kʌm baj ˈja:], on a wax cylinder recording collected in Georgia in 1926 by Robert W. Gordon, now at the American Folklife Center. Whatever the precise origins of the spiritual, it is not implausible that the phrase come by here/kumbaya was originally taken from a Gullah speaker, or someone in contact with Gullah, as has been claimed according to Winick. The final syllable ya means "here" in Gullah; compare [kʌm owə yʌ tᴜ mi] "come over here to me" in the transcription of Lorenzo Dow Turner (Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect, University of Chicago Press, 1949, pp. 272-73) and come'yuh "come here" (Ambrose E. Gonzales, Gullah Stories of the Carolina Coast, The State Company, Columbia, SC, 1922, p. 147). The word ya is etymologized as "S[tandard] E[nglish] pronunc[iation] [hɪə] with loss of /h-/ and vowel opening" in Richard Allsopp, Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage (Oxford University Press, 1996). Compare also the entries for ya in F. G. Cassidy and R. B. Le Page, Dictionary of Jamaican English, 2nd edition (Cambridge University Press, 1980); and in C. N. Fyle and E. D. Jones, A Krio-English Dictionary (Oxford University Press, 1980).

First Known Use

1992, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of kumbaya was in 1992

Dictionary Entries Near kumbaya

Kumaso

kumbaya

Kumbh Mela

See More Nearby Entries 

Cite this Entry

“Kumbaya.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/kumbaya. Accessed 24 Apr. 2024.

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