Talk:Jambo (greeting)

Latest comment: 6 years ago by Markcymru in topic Dictdef

Dictdef edit

Good stuff. Important to escape WP:DICTDEF with sourced content, so still needs some sources IMHO to cover assertions in it - a bunch of dict sources don't easily build an encyclopedic article. Note the section that was a copy of the dab was removed - some items were not valid dab entries and so have subsequently been removed from the dab. The use of any of them in this article could do with a source(s). Widefox; talk 22:41, 2 November 2015 (UTC)Reply


As someone who spent the first few years of his life in East Africa, and learned to speak Swahili... I'd like to believe that the word 'Jamboree' is derived from 'Jambo'. However, as a hobbyist linguist, I'm bound to say that it's very likely that it was NOT. The Online Etymological Dictionary (as well as others) says it is mid-19th century American slang. [1] I suspect it was probably coined on the pattern of 'Jubilee' and 'Shivaree'. Not only that, but the derivation of 'transferee' as a shortening of 'transfer-ree' is also wrong. 'Transferee' is a formation that follows the pattern set by a number of words with the ending '-ee', coming originally from the English legal system (e.g. trustee, mortgagee), which used many terms from Anglo-Norman French.... in particular, the endings '-é' (masculine) [or '-ée' (feminine)], the ending of the French past participle, which was eventually anglicized to '-ee'. This ending is used to denote the other party in a transaction where the initiator is denoted by '-or'. [2] Markcymru (talk) 02:53, 4 February 2018 (UTC)Reply

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