The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) has added several Nigerian and West African words, including amala and nyash, to its lexicon in its latest update published in December 2025 and rolled into 2026.
The update, announced by the OED on Wednesday via X, features commonly used African words tied to food, music, markets, pop culture and everyday speech, underscoring the growing global influence of African languages on English.
According to the OED, the update includes more than 500 new words, phrases and senses, alongside revisions to over 1,000 existing entries, as part of its quarterly review.
Author and OED Head of Pronunciations, Catherine Sangster, said the update marked a milestone in pronunciation recording, noting: “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.”
Among the Nigerian entries formally recognised are abeg, defined as an interjection or adverb used “to express a range of emotions, such as surprise, exasperation, disbelief, etc,” and amala, described as “in Nigerian cookery: a kind of dough made of yam, cassava, or unripe plantain flour.”
The update also includes Afrobeats, Ghana Must Go, Mammy Market, nyash and Moi Moi, alongside other African terms such as benachin, domoda, hiplife and yassa.
The latest expansion builds on a similar update in January 2025, when the OED added Nigerian expressions like japa, agbero, eba and Naija, further reflecting the increasing presence of Nigerian culture and language in global English usage.