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

• share taxi

Derived terms

• matatu culture

Translations

minivan often used as a share taxi

Finnish: matatu (fi), reittitaksi Swahili: matatu (sw) (Kenya), moshogi (Sheng), shedhi (Sheng), daladala (sw) (Tanzania) Ukrainian: матату (matatu), матрей (matrej)

See also

• makanga
• manamba

References

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

Further reading

• matatu on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Category:matatus on Wikimedia Commons.Wikimedia Commons

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.