Igbo (slang)
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Igbo (also spelled ìgbó) is a Nigerian Pidgin slang term for cannabis or marijuana derived from the Yoruba word "igbó", loosely translated to mean "forest", "wood" or "bush". It is widely used in urban Nigerian contexts, particularly in speech, music and youth culture. The term has no relation to the Igbo people, and represents a homonym that evolved through separate linguistic pathways.
Etymology
[edit]The slang term "igbo" is believed to originate from the Yorùbá word ìgbó, meaning "bush" or "forest".[1] Cannabis plants naturally grow in bushy or forested areas, and the term likely emerged as a metaphor for the plant in informal Nigerian Pidgin. Over time, ìgbó came to symbolically represent marijuana in the sociolects of urban speakers.
This etymology is supported by its appearance in 19th-century Yoruba dictionaries[1] and its absence in early Igbo lexicons.
Cultural and linguistic context
[edit]Like many slang terms in Nigerian Pidgin, igbo represents a figurative semantic shift from physical space (forest) to substance (cannabis). The term has become widely adopted and understood, even outside of Yoruba-speaking regions, due to the influence of Pidgin as a lingua franca.[2][3]
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ a b Samuel Ajayi Crowther (1852). A Vocabulary of the Yoruba Language. London: Seeleys. p. 134
- ^ Cynthia Nkechinyere Odogwu (2018). "A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Slangy Expressions in Nigerian Pidgin." Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies.
- ^ Wuraola Fisayo Oyewusi; Adekanmbi, Olubayo; Akinsande, Olalekan (2020). "Semantic Enrichment of Nigerian Pidgin English for Contextual Sentiment Classification". arXiv:2003.12450 [cs.CL].