Meaning & use
Kumbaya
Last updated
A spirit of naive or overly sentimental unity and cooperation, often used skeptically to describe superficial harmony.
See it in a sentence
The negotiators reached a kumbaya moment, but the underlying disputes were far from resolved.
Critics dismissed the summit's closing statement as empty kumbaya talk.
A note on using this word
The word began as the title of a African American spiritual song, likely from Gullah for 'come by here,' before its ironic political use emerged in the 1990s.
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