Our paper describes the main features of a secret linguistic variety mainly used by Gurage women, the so-called mʷǝjǝt. They were followers of a former local religious tradition, which flourished until the beginning of the 20th century, but then started to disappear due to the growing influence of Christianity and Islam in the Gurage region. Today, it is only remembered by a few old women. The cultural and sociolinguistic role of the Fedwet variety is discussed in few publications, notably Shack (1966: 133–135); Gabreyesus (1991: 140–145); Sentalem (2012), and particularly Etaferahu (2021), but not much has been known about its linguistic features, except a selective wordlist given in Leslau (1964). Etaferahu (2019) contains a more detailed linguistic description of the Fedwet, in comparison to another Gurage secret variety used by handcrafters. The current paper will provide a description of the sociolinguistic features of the Fedwet variety. The data were gathered by elicitation, recording of free texts, and interviews. Besides an assessment of the former social function and current usage of the Fedwet variety, our presentation will show that the Fedwet variety is an argot based on Chaha (Ethiosemitic, Sebat Bet Gurage) which has been manipulated through several processes, including regular morphophonological changes, a number of lexical substitutions, and semantic extensions and changes. References Etaferahu Hailu. 2019. Description of the social varieties used by the Gurage: Fedwet and Fuga. Addis Ababa: Addis Ababa University (PhD Dissertation). Etaferahu Hailu. 2021. Sociolinguistic functions of the secret language of Gurage females. In Ado Derib, Wasse Gelagay Almaz & Janne Bondi Johannessen (eds.), Grammatical and sociolinguistic aspects of Ethiopian languages, 119–135. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Gabreyesus Hailemariam. 1991. The Guragué and their culture. New York, NY: Vantage Press. Leslau, Wolf. 1964. An Ethiopian argot of a Gurage secret society. Journal of African Languages 3. 52–65. Shack, William A. 1966. The Gurage: a people of the ensete culture. London: Oxford University Press. Sentalem Sijja. 2012. የሙየት በዓል አከባበር / jämujät bäʔal ʔakkäbabbär [Celebration of the Mujät commemoration day]. Addis Ababa: Addis Ababa University (BA Thesis).