Word.ws English Dictionary

berbere

/bɛɚˈbɛɚ.ɹeɪ/

berbere noun: a spice mixture, usually consisting of chili peppers, garlic, ginger, basil, and other spices, which is used in Ethiopian and Eritrean cuisine.

berbere: a spice mixture, usually consisting of chili peppers, garlic, ginger, basil, and other spices,...
Image: Badagnani, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

berbere (uncountable)

  1. A spice mixture, usually consisting of chili peppers, garlic, ginger, basil, and other spices, which is used in Ethiopian and Eritrean cuisine.
    • Food in Ethiopia is always seasoned with berberè, a kind of pimiento.1939, Ferdinando Quaranta di San Severino, Ethiopia, an empire in the making, page 16
    • Wat is a sauce composed of legumes, including horsebeans, chickpeas, kidneybeans, and lentils pounded to a flour, and mixed with spices. First berbere (red pepper) is dried and ground, then mixed with onions and butter, thus forming a thick cream.1958, The Journal of Tropical Pediatrics and African Child Health

Origin of berbere

From Amharic በርበሬ (bärbäre) and/or Tigrinya በርበረ (bärbärä).

Questions about berbere

What does berbere mean?
Berbere means a spice mixture, usually consisting of chili peppers, garlic, ginger, basil, and other spices, which is used in Ethiopian and Eritrean cuisine.
What part of speech is berbere?
Berbere is a noun.
How do you pronounce berbere?
Berbere is pronounced /bɛɚˈbɛɚ.ɹeɪ/.

Words near berbere in the dictionary

  1. berbamine
  2. berbe
  3. Berber
  4. Berbera
  5. berberastine
  6. berbere
  7. Berberian
  8. Berberians
  9. Berberich
  10. Berberiches
  11. berberidaceous

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: berbere (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-berbere.ogg.

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