fanya mapenzi

Swahili

Etymology

From -fanya (“to do”) + mapenzi (“love”).

Pronunciation

• Audio (Kenya):

  (file)

Verb

-fanya mapenzi (infinitive kufanya mapenzi)

1. (euphemistic) to make love, to have sex

Conjugation

Conjugation of -fanya mapenzi: see -fanya.

References

• Tramutoli, Rosanna (2015) “'Love' Encoding in Swahili: a Semantic Description through a Corpus-Based Analysis”, in Swahili Forum‎^[1], volume 22, →ISSN, page 76 of 72-103: “In the corpus there are only a few examples in which the term mapenzi is associated with ‘physical love’, and it mostly occurs in the expression ‘kufanya mapenzi’, (‘to make love’).”