nyanza

English

Etymology

Borrowed from Shona nyanzá (“lake”).

Noun

nyanza (plural nyanzas)

(usually capitalized, in place names) A lake (in Africa).
- 1884, John Walters Childebert, The Golden Treasure: Or a World of Knowledge, page 322:
  Burton was laid aside by sickness and his companion, hearing of another "nyanza," pushed northward and on August 3, 1858, stood upon the shores of a lake which he named Victoria, feeling sure that the nyanza at his feet gave birth to the Nile.
- 1903, Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer, Europe in Africa in the Nineteenth Century, page 123:
  The Victoria and Albert Nyanzas are in the Equatorial provinces which lie east of Congo Free State, but between these lakes and Congo Free State lie lands under the authority or "influence" of the British East African Company, with not very definite […]
- 1911, The Encyclopaedia Britannica: Mun-Oddfellows, page 698:
  [He found a] large nyanza (lake), which he rightly conceived to be the head reservoir of the White Nile, and which in honour of the queen of England he named Victoria Nyanza.
- 1916, John Clark Ridpath, With the World's People: An Account of the Ethnic Origin, Primitive Estate, Early Migrations, Social Evolution, and Present Conditions and Promise of the Principal Families of Men; Together with a Preliminary Inquiry on the Time, Place and Manner of the Beginning, page 622:
  Next after the Victoria we may mention the two other great Nyanzas of the same region, but lying to the west.
- 2011 October 6, Tim Jeal, Stanley: Africa's Greatest Explorer, Faber & Faber, →ISBN, page 11:
  In 1864 Samuel Baker reached a large lake north-west of Speke's Victoria Nyanza, the Luta Nzige, which he renamed Lake Albert. But none of these men had proved whether these nyanzas were single bodies of water, or groups of lakes. Nor did anyone know whether Lake Tanganyika – lying to the south-west of Lake Albert – fed it by a connecting river.
(Can we verify⁽⁺⁾ this sense?) (Africa) A sheet of water, or marsh.
(Can we verify⁽⁺⁾ this sense?) (Africa) The river feeding a lake.

Shona

Etymology

Cognate to Rwanda-Rundi inyanja and Chichewa nyanja.

Noun

nyanzá class 9 (plural nyanzá class 10)

lake
(Manyika, Zezuru) ocean, sea
Synonym: (Standard Shona) gungwa