lipa
verb
to pay.
Use lipa for paying money. Lipa deni means pay a debt.
Also to repay; to give something in return.
Lipa can also describe paying back a debt or returning a kindness.
Forms
- lipia
- pay for
Origins
Lipa belongs to Swahili’s inherited Bantu vocabulary.
Sources5
Thilo Schadeberg, in Martin Haspelmath and Uri Tadmor (editors), World Loanword Database CLDF (Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, 2009), wold-master/cldf/forms.csv row 36003.
Lipa goes back to earlier Bantu.
Assibi Apatewon Amidu, The Case for a 'Progressive' Derivational Affix in Kiswahili Predicate Items (Trondheim: Working Papers in Linguistics 18, Department of Linguistics, University of Trondheim, 1993), 77.
Documents lipia as the derived form of lipa meaning to pay for.
A. C. Madan, Swahili-English Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1903), 223.
Records lipa as to pay, repay, or make a return for something.
Edward Steere, A Handbook of the Swahili Language as Spoken at Zanzibar (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1884), 220.
Records Lipa ku- as to pay a debt.
University of Kansas Open Language Resource Center, University of Kansas Kiswahili Glossary (University of Kansas), -lipa glossary row.
Lists -lipa as a verb meaning to pay.
Examples
Nitalipa sasa.
I will pay now.
Nimelipa shilingi mia mbili.
I have paid two hundred shillings.
Ninaweza kulipa hapa?
Can I pay here?
Unalipa kwa simu?
Are you paying by phone?
Lipa kwenye kaunta.
Pay at the counter.
Tutalipa kesho.
We will pay tomorrow.
Amelipa deni lake.
They have paid their debt.
Nitalipa deni kesho.
I will repay the debt tomorrow.
Umeshalipa?
Have you paid yet?
