maraca
Americannoun
-
maracas
plural
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of maraca
1815–25; < Portuguese < Tupi maráka
Explanation
A maraca is a musical instrument that you shake — the stones or beans rattle against the hollow case in time to the beat of the music. If the violin seems a bit too complicated to learn, try out some maracas! Maracas are percussion instruments commonly used in Latin and Caribbean music. They mark the beat like drums do, and they are fairly simple to play. Most traditional maracas are made out of dried, hollow gourds or coconut shells, and they're filled with dry beans or pebbles. The word maraca comes from the Portuguese, via a Brazilian language called Tupi. In some French-speaking parts of the world, maracas are called "shac-shacs."
Vocabulary lists containing maraca
Music to My Ears: Instrumental Vocab
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The Distance Between Us
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Musical Instruments - Introductory
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
That’s where he got his maraca work from.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 24, 2025
Another attendee was Naldinho Kumaruara, 29, a spiritual leader wearing a crown of blue macaw feathers and a necklace made of snake bones, and who held a giant maraca in his hand.
From Seattle Times ● Aug. 7, 2023
He wore a long headdress of blue macaw feathers and held a maraca.
From Reuters ● Aug. 25, 2021
The band people would throw me a maraca or some kind of castanet or drum.
From New York Times ● Nov. 9, 2018
That was okay, because it was a hot spring night and El Barrio had turned into a maraca and all the people had come out transformed as seeds.
From "Bodega Dreams" by Ernesto Quinonez
Boys in bright shirts play pan pipes, while girls wearing molas shake maracas.
From BBC ● Feb. 7, 2025
Vanessa Muros, an archaeology researcher at UCLA, showed up outside the encampment with finger symbols, maracas and a tambourine.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 1, 2024
It turns the Switch’s palm-sized Joy-Con controllers into a pair of maracas, and your challenge is to shake them in rhythm to an assortment of dance hits.
From Seattle Times ● Aug. 27, 2023
Their music, the shake of maracas punctuated by sharp drumbeats on the llamador and call-and-response chants, is made for dancing, she told the crowd.
From Washington Post ● Aug. 19, 2022
A group of men showed up with a cuatro, a guitar, maracas, and güiros.
From "When I Was Puerto Rican" by Esmeralda Santiago
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
