mke
The Swahili word for wife is mke.
mke is used to refer to a female partner in a marriage.
Meaning: female partner in a marriage (noun)
How does it change in a sentence?
mke belongs to the m-/wa- noun class, which is used for persons. To say 'my wife', you add the possessive pronoun wangu to the noun mke to form mke wangu.
Did you know?
- In many Swahili-speaking cultures, referring to one's wife simply as mke in public can sound overly clinical or distant. It is more common and culturally warm to use terms of endearment or to refer to her as 'the mother of my children'.
- The term mke comes from the Proto-Bantu root *mʊ̀káí or *mʊ̀ké, meaning the word has remained fundamentally similar across hundreds of different Bantu languages for thousands of years.
- While mke is the standard word, you may hear the word bibi used in certain contexts. However, be careful, as in many regions bibi primarily means 'grandmother' or is a formal title for an elderly woman.
Examples in context
- Mke wangu ni mzuri sana.My wife is very beautiful.
- Ninamtunza mke wangu vizuri.I take good care of my wife.
- Mke wa mtu yule amenisaidia sana.That man's wife has helped me a lot.
Sources
- Wiktionary, “wife” translations, CC BY-SA 4.0, dump of 2026-09-26.
- Word origins: Wiktionary entries mke, CC BY-SA 4.0.
