The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) has expanded its lexicon with new African words and expressions in its latest update, published in December 2025 and rolled into 2026.
The update, shared by the OED on Wednesday via X, features commonly used Nigerian and West African words linked to food, music, everyday speech, markets and pop culture, reinforcing the growing influence of African languages on global English.
According to the report, the December 2025 update includes more than 500 new words, phrases and senses, alongside revisions to over 1,000 existing entries, as part of the dictionary’s quarterly review.
Author and OED Head of Pronunciations, Catherine Sangster, said the update also marked a milestone in how pronunciations are recorded and presented across different varieties of English.
“With this update we introduce a new model for the transcription of Maltese English pronunciations; this is the nineteenth World English pronunciation model in our collection. We also celebrate a decade of OED having spoken pronunciations, which were first added in December 2015,” Sangster said.
She added that the dictionary has expanded its pronunciation features, including multiple audio files where necessary, and noted that fresh pronunciations were added to several West African English entries as part of the update.
Among the newly added entries is abeg, which the OED says can be used as an interjection or adverb “to express a range of emotions, such as surprise, exasperation, disbelief, etc”.
Another Nigerian food staple, amala, is defined as “in Nigerian cookery: a kind of dough made of yam, cassava, or unripe plantain flour, typically formed into a ball and served as an accompaniment to other dishes”.
The update also formally recognises Afrobeats, described as “originally: a style of popular music incorporating elements of West African music and of jazz, soul, and funk”.
Other additions include Ghana Must Go, biko, Mammy Market, nyash, and Moi Moi, words widely used across Nigeria and Ghana in daily conversations and cultural settings.
New African words added in the latest update include: abrokyire, Adowa, ampesi, benachin, bichir, domoda, dumboy, hiplife, kpanlogo, light soup, nawetan, obroni, poda-poda and yassa.
The latest update builds on a similar expansion reported in January 2025, when the OED added 20 Nigerian words and expressions to its dictionary.
That 2025 update included popular terms such as japa, agbero, eba, 419 and abi, words deeply rooted in Nigerian street language, food culture, migration conversations and internet slang.
Other Nigerian entries from the 2025 list were area boy, yahoo boy, yahoo, Naija, suya, kobo, Edo, Kanuri, jand, janded, cross-carpet and cross-carpeting.
At the time, it was reported that some of the words, including japa and jand, appeared as both nouns and verbs, while pronunciation guides were provided to help non-Nigerians pronounce them correctly.
