Etymology

reggae

R1E1G2G2A1E1

Today it means: 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. Full definition →

Jamaican Creole rege
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The story

  1. Jamaican Creole · borrowed fromrege“rags; a quarrel”
  2. English todayreggae

From Jamaican Creole rege (“rags; a quarrel”), see rag; originally used in the 1960s to describe a Jamaican dance. Compare ragtime. Broader musical sense popularized by the 1968 Maytals song “Do the Reggay”.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.