A Kenyan affirmation that everything's satisfactory — the person, the situation, the moment — flexible enough to work as greeting, response, or compliment.
Fiti is what Kenyan Gen Z speakers reach for when they want to signal that everything's alright — a person, a situation, a vibe. It's the word you'd hear in a Nairobi greeting ('Fiti?' translating to 'You good?'), as a quick affirmation ('I'm fiti' meaning 'I'm fine'), or as a compliment ('You look fiti'). The sound is casual, the meaning flexible, the context everything.
The word emerged from Sheng, Kenya's urban youth language that blends Swahili, English, and local languages into something entirely its own. Fiti came from the English word 'fit,' transformed through the phonetic patterns that make Sheng feel authentically Kenyan — that added 'i' ending that gives borrowed words a Swahili-like rhythm. By the 2010s, it had become so embedded in youth conversation that speakers code-switched between languages mid-sentence without thinking.
What makes fiti interesting isn't just what it means, but what it represents: a generation comfortable creating their own linguistic rules. They take what works from multiple languages, reshape it to fit their mouths and their lives, and build a vocabulary that marks them as urban, young, and Kenyan. It's linguistic creativity as identity — every adapted word a small act of cultural ownership.