The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) has expanded its collection with new African words and expressions in its latest update published in December 2025 and rolled into 2026.
The update was announced by the OED on Wednesday via X and includes commonly used Nigerian and West African words linked to food, music, markets, everyday speech and pop culture.
According to the Dictionary, the December 2025 update added more than 500 new words, phrases, and senses, and revised over 1,000 existing entries as part of its quarterly review.
Author and OED Head of Pronunciations, Catherine Sangster, said the update also marked an important step in how pronunciations are recorded across different forms 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 the use of multiple audio files where necessary. She also noted that new pronunciations were added to several West African English entries.
Among the Nigerian expressions newly recognized is “abeg,” which the OED describes as a word used “to express a range of emotions, such as surprise, exasperation, disbelief, etc.”
Another popular Nigerian food, 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 Nigerian and West African words added include Ghana Must Go, biko, Mammy Market, nyash, and moi moi.
Additional African entries in the update are abrokyire, Adowa, ampesi, benachin, bichir, domoda, dumboy, hiplife, kpanlogo, light soup, nawetan, obroni, poda-poda, and yassa.
The latest expansion builds on a similar update in January 2025, when the OED added 20 Nigerian words and expressions.
That earlier update included popular terms such as japa, agbero, eba, 419, and abi, which reflect Nigerian street language, food culture, migration discussions, and online 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.
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