Meanings
plural sufurias
- AfricaEastcookingA deep metal cooking pot with a flat base and no handles.
A few days to uhuru, the local sufuria repairman, Bangarasio, was repairing my mother's sufurias.
2000, Kiraitu Murungi, In the Mud of Politics (Acacia Biographies; 1), Nairobi: Acacia Stantex Publishers, →ISBN, page 55 more examples
Two large sufurias. For baking and roasting. Obtained from Zanzibar. Large enough to hold fry-pan mentioned above. / One small sufuria. For native servants. The only way to prevent the master's sufuria being used.
1891, S. Tristram Pruen, “Appendix: List of Supplies Necessary for One Person Travelling in Central Africa for One Year”, in The Arab and the African: Experiences in Eastern Equatorial Africa during a Residence of Three Years, London: Seeley and Co., Limited […], →OCLC, pages 326–327In a corner, he discovered a small amount of maize-flour in a bag among the utensils. He put this in a sufuria on a fire, added water and stirred it with a wooden spoon. He liked porridge in the morning.
1967, James Ngugi [i.e., Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o], chapter 1, in A Grain of Wheat (African Writers Series; 36), London: Heinemann, →OCLC; republished Nairobi, Kenya; Kampala, Uganda: East African Educational Publishers; Dar es Salaam, Tanzania: Ujuzi Educational Publishers, 2002 (2008 printing), →ISBN, page 3The prefects, including the choir boy, had a separate table. Their food was even cooked separately, in a small sufuria the way it is done at home, [...]
1972, Miriam Khamadi Were, The High School Gent (New Fiction from Africa series), Nairobi, Kenya: Oxford University Press, →OCLC, page 18Where there is no discipline, children do not perform well in their national examinations, for discipline is the mother of learning. Without it, imparting academic knowledge is like carefully boiling milk in a dirty, greasy sufuria.
1987, Priscilla Were, “The Importance of Children”, in The Kenyan We Want: An Approach to Social Education and Ethics, Nairobi, Kenya; Kampala, Uganda: East African Educational Publishers; Dar es Salaam, Tanzania: Ujuzi Educational Publishers, published 1998, →ISBN, page 34Sometimes that lunch was in the form of three raw eggs and a sufuria because there were times Damiano thought it wise to cook in school during lunch hour. Come that hour and he would light a fire, break his eggs into the sufuria, fry them, eat them and then belch as if he had just demolished a six course buffet.
2002, Wahome Mutahi, Whispers & Camisassius: 14 Whispers’ Stories Published between 1991 and 1997, Nairobi: Seed Magazine, Consolata Missionaries, →OCLC, page 51
Origin
- Arabicصُفْر (ṣufr)
- Swahilisufuria
- Englishsufuria
Borrowed from Swahili sufuria, borrowed from Omani Arabic صفرية (ṣufriya, “cooking pot”), from صفر (“copper”) + ـية (-iyya).
Full word history & related roots →Translations
Swahili sufuria
- sufuriadeep cooking pot
Cite this entry
sufuria. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/sufuria
“sufuria.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/sufuria. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “sufuria,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/sufuria.
Source: sufuria on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.