English words from African languages
Words that reached English from languages across Africa, some directly and some by way of European traders and explorers.
- Gorilla
Around 500 BC, the Carthaginian navigator Hanno sailed down the West African coast and reported meeting hairy "wild women" that his interpreters called gorillai; his men killed three and brought the skins home. In 1847, the American missionary and physician…
From the Wed, Sep 23, 2026 roundup → - Jumbo
London Zoo's biggest attraction through the 1860s and 70s was an African elephant named Jumbo, whose enormous size, he stood over eleven feet at the shoulder, made him a sensation, and whose sale to P.T. Barnum's American circus in 1882 caused a minor…
From the Sun, Sep 20, 2026 roundup → - Tango
Nobody agrees on where the word came from before it became a dance: some trace it to a Spanish term imitating a drumbeat, others to Kikongo or other West African languages carried across the Atlantic by the diaspora communities of Buenos Aires and Montevideo…
From the Sat, Sep 19, 2026 roundup →