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Maafa.

The history of slavery and anti-black racism and discrimination in the United States; the historical enslavement of Africans and associated atrocities, under the interpretation of these as a genocide against them.

5 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun
  1. The history of slavery and anti-black racism and discrimination in the United States; the historical enslavement of Africans and associated atrocities, under the interpretation of these as a genocide against them.

    uncountable
Where this word comes from

Etymology tree Arabic آفَة (ʔāfa)bor. Swahili afa Swahili maafabor. English Maafa From Swahili maafa (“disaster, catastrophe”). Coined in 1994 by Marimba Ani (in Let the Circle Be Unbroken: The Implications of African Spirituality in the Diaspora) on the model of the Hebrew-derived designation Shoah of the Jewish Holocaust.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.