How to Use griot in a Sentence

griot

noun
  • Both the playwright and the actor have a touch of griot in them.
    — Jim Higgins, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 24 Mar. 2021
  • And Questlove, the griot, is still telling stories about his beloved.
    — Keith Murphy, VIBE.com, 12 Dec. 2025
  • There are farmers, too, and twirling griots and dancing, stick-wielding women.
    — David Lyman, Cincinnati.com, 18 Aug. 2017
  • That optimism is the Detroit tradition of which the griot sings.
    — Thomas J. Sugrue, New York Times, 6 Sep. 2017
  • Lucas was a bridge to the past and a griot of the Black community that held a university of knowledge.
    — Darcel Rockett, Chicago Tribune, 22 Aug. 2022
  • Gregory's retelling fits his public role as a griot, preserving and passing on oral traditions.
    — Jim Higgins, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 1 Sep. 2017
  • As the day lengthens, and between moves, a little grease imprints each of my pieces—the residue of crackly griot, pikliz, and tostones.
    — Inés Anguiano, Bon Appetit Magazine, 10 Feb. 2026
  • By her grace Zandria Robinson is a shaman, griot, marabout, holy figure in atypical package.
    — Tunde Wey, San Francisco Chronicle, 15 Dec. 2017
  • Reggie Jackson, head griot of the museum, said about the museum's reopening, which is slated to take place this fall.
    — Talis Shelbourne, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 13 Sep. 2019
  • The tours will be led by griots, or docents, from America’s Black Holocaust museum.
    — Anya Sesay, jsonline.com, 5 Feb. 2026
  • These scenes are framed by interjections from a griot, or traditional Black storyteller.
    — Jesse Green, New York Times, 13 Apr. 2021
  • In West African culture, a griot is a tribal storyteller who acts as an advisor to leaders and serves as a living archive.
    — Time, 20 Nov. 2022
  • That’s particularly true of those who practice the art of the griot — the hereditary caste of bards, instrumentalists and singers.
    — John Adamian, courant.com, 18 June 2018
  • The 29-year-old was born in Mali, the oldest of five siblings in a family of griots, or West African storytellers.
    — Samantha Chery, Washington Post, 26 July 2024
  • Gulet Isse is a genderqueer Somali American artist hailing from a lineage of griot activists.
    — Ryan Lattanzio, IndieWire, 18 July 2024
  • Questlove is nothing short of what West Africans call a griot; a lyricist, musician, keeper and an orator of history.
    — Meagan Jordan, Rolling Stone, 21 Oct. 2021
  • Sory’s work, seen today, seems to beckon across the gulf of time to a past all but lost, a past mired in legends of emirs and mansas and griots, a past that reforms into an ever-evolving and frenetic present.
    — Chris Abani, The New Republic, 19 Apr. 2018
  • In West African culture, a griot is a traveling poet, musician, or storyteller who keeps oral tradition alive.
    — Richard Newby, Vulture, 12 Nov. 2022
  • There are other skalds, or griots, or troubadours devoted to the goings on in the Pembroke (and, later, Powell) home, and when the reruns hit the streamers our world grew.
    — Sam Lipsyte, New Yorker, 19 Oct. 2025
  • Fujiie lives and works with Maboudou Sanou, a griot, and his family in a modest home in a community on the outskirts of Ouagadougou.
    — Clair MacDougall, Quartz, 22 Mar. 2022
  • There was no traditional puppetry, but instead, powerful vocals and movement inspired by griot storytelling.
    — Victoria Uwumarogie, Essence, 9 Dec. 2025
  • Director Sheri Williams Pannell also served as onstage griot (and occasional sixth singer).
    — Jim Higgins, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 22 June 2021
  • Although the standards for ninth grade world history doesn’t explicitly mentions griots, Ford says the information slips out of her while teaching anyway.
    — al, 1 Mar. 2020
  • Its specialty menu blends Haitian cuisine and American favorites with oxtail and griot pizzas, Haitian pasta and stewed chicken.
    — Loán Lake, Charlotte Observer, 16 Sep. 2025
  • Now, imagine that story reinforcing itself from the perspectives of various griots, or chroniclers, or for the sake of this exercise, spinners.
    — Ken Makin, The Christian Science Monitor, 2 June 2023
  • Lewis is a dismal institution’s griot, a historical actor and hero capable of telling the most complex and painful of American stories—the story of race.
    — David Remnick, The New Yorker, 15 Jan. 2017
  • Members of Miami's Haitian community also eat seasoned roast pork — griot — for Christmas.
    — Martin Vassolo, Axios, 20 Dec. 2024
  • The album’s name refers to the anti-colonial cultural movement in Mali led by the griots before the country’s independence in 1960.
    — Brian Murphy, Washington Post, 27 July 2024
  • Flowing deliberately over a luxurious spread of prime Pete Rock beats, the griot from Chicago raps with wisdom and patience.
    — Simon Vozick-Levinson, Rolling Stone, 12 July 2024
  • Rapping itself can be traced back hundreds of years to the West African tradition of the griot, the oral historians who wrote and performed songs to document in music the past and present of their people.
    — San Diego Union-Tribune, 31 Dec. 2022

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'griot.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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