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New Dictionary Will Codify African American English And Its Global Influence On Language

Phyllis Coley @phyllis_coley

A comprehensive dictionary is being compiled to showcase the impact Black Americans have had on the development of the English language.

The Oxford Dictionary of African American English (ODAAE) is a project by an alliance of researchers from Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African & African American Research and Oxford University Press.

Entries will be woven together from materials gathered from crowdsourcing, social media, books, music, and newspapers. The lexicon is expected to be published in 2025.

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Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the Editor in Chief for the Oxford Dictionary of African American English. (Amy Sussman/Getty Images)

“Every speaker of American English borrows heavily from words invented by African Americans, whether they know it or not,” said Henry Louis Gates Jr., the Editor in Chief of the new dictionary and director of the Hutchins Center, in a news release.

“Words that we take for granted today such as ‘cool’ and ‘crib,’ ‘hokum’ and ‘diss,’ ‘hip’ and ‘hep,’ ‘bad’ meaning ‘good,’ and ‘dig’ meaning ‘to understand’ — these are just a tiny fraction of the words that have come into American English from African American speakers.”

Jon West-Bay, a lecturer in the museum and heritage studies department at Johns Hopkins University, says it’s a “great thing” when projects include cultures that were left out of the conversation.

“We all subscribe to building culture,” he said. “That’s what I believe our mission is as humans. We’re not just here to make money. We all want to leave our creative mark somewhere and we hope it’ll be cool.” 

Adam Bradley, an advisory board member for the ODAAE and a professor of English and African American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), calls the project a “landmark collaboration” with a goal of reaching “unprecedented” depth and scope.