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- azawakh - probably from Fula or Tuareg. A breed of dog from West and North Africa
- banana - adopted from Wolof via Spanish or Portuguese
- banjo - probably Bantu mbanza
- basenji - breed of dog from Central Africa - Congo, Central African Republic etc.
- boma - from Swahili
- bwana - from Swahili, meaning a husband, important person or safari leader
- chemistry - from Ancient Egyptian khemia meaning transmutation of earth
- chimpanzee - loaned in the 18th century from a Bantu language, possibly Kivili ci-mpenzi.
- dengue - possibly from Swahili dinga
- ebony - from Ancient Egyptian hebeni
- gerenuk - from Somali. A long-necked antelope in Eastern Africa (Kenya, Somalia, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Djibouti)
- gnu - from Khoisan !nu through Khoikhoi i-ngu and Dutch gnoe
- goober - possibly from Bantu (Kikongo and Kimbundu nguba)
- gumbo - from Bantu (Kimbundu ngombo meaning "okra")
- impala - from Zulu im-pala
- impi - from Zulu language meaning war, battle or a regiment
- indaba - from Xhosa or Zulu languages - 'stories' or 'news' typically conflated with 'meeting' (often used in South African English)
- jenga - from the Swahili word for 'build'
- jumbo - from Swahili (jambo (hello) or from Kongo nzamba "elephant")
- Kwanzaa - recent coinage (Maulana Karenga 1965) as the name of an African American holiday, abstracted from a Swahili phrase matunda ya kwanza, meaning "first fruits [of the harvest]"
- kijiji - from Swahili for 'village,' 'hamlet' or 'small town'
- lapa - from Sotho languages - enclosure or barbecue area (often used in South African English)
- macaque - from Bantu makaku through Portuguese and French
- mamba - from Zulu or Swahili mamba
- marimba - from Bantu (Kimbundu and Swahili marimba, malimba)
- okapi - from a language in the Congo
- safari - from Swahili travel, ultimately from Arabic
- sangoma - from Zulu - traditional healer (often used in South African English)
- Tilapia - Possibly a latinization "thiape", the Tswana word for fish
- tsetse - from a Bantu language (Tswana tsetse, Luhya tsiisi)
- ubuntu - Nguni term for "mankind; humanity", in South Africa since the 1980s also used capitalized, Ubuntu, as the name of a philosophy or ideology of "human kindness" or "humanism"
- zebra - of unknown origin, recorded since c. 1600, possibly from a Congolese language, or alternatively from Amharic.
- zombie - likely from West African (compare Kikongo zumbi "fetish", Kimbundu nzumbi "ghost"), but alternatively derived from Spanish sombra "shade, ghost"
Video English words of African origin
References
Source of article : Wikipedia
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