reggae
noun
Simple meaning
A music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1960s and is heavily associated with Rastafarianism.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
rehgaySay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈɹɛɡeɪ
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
Rastafarimusicoriginally dance
A music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1960s and is heavily associated with Rastafarianism, featuring a heavy bass line and percussive rhythm guitar on the offbeat, often with close vocal harmonies.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
This meaning: (Rastafari, music, originally dance) A music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1960s and is heavily associated with Rastafarianism, featuring a heavy bass line and percussive rhythm guitar on the offbeat, often with close vocal harmonies.
Used this way, reggae is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. This is a musical use: it is everyday language among musicians and listeners, and specialised outside that.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Where it naturally appears
- Music/performance
- Arts writing
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use reggae
- “We love listening to reggae music on warm summer evenings.”
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.