Word.ws English Dictionary

ebonify

ebonify verb: to adopt or imitate an African-American speech style, mannerisms, or mindset, particularly one associated with an urban vernacular or informal expression.

Verb

ebonify (third-person singular simple present ebonifies (very rare), present participle ebonifying, simple past and past participle ebonified)

  1. (Internet, transitive, uncommon, African-American Vernacular) To adopt or imitate an African-American speech style, mannerisms, or mindset, particularly one associated with an urban vernacular or informal expression.
    • I can only imagine the hoots and laughter of the Aryan Nation crowd when they come across the first official textbook for 'Ebonics' 101; assuming you think all these ebonified English profs at the univ., with obv nothing better to do, would ever dare write such a thing. It's not a language, in...1997 January 10, Mark Johnson, “In Defense of Ebonics!”, in alt.politics.libertarian (Usenet)
    • Now, to "ebonify" it, so sean has a bit of a chance to understand...(I tell you now, I can ebonify better by myself, but the translator's such a nifty thing to have...plus, I didn't wanna bother with actually writing it all out, so..)1999 July 31, The Rare South African Zonga Beetle, “hi”, in alt.nerd.obsessive (Usenet)

Examples of ebonify in a sentence

  • At the time of the Ebonics controversy we had a number of supposed ebonifying translators which did not produce BEV or Jive or Hiphop.2004 April 22, Lars Eighner, “Ebonics from West Africa”, in alt.usage.english (Usenet):
  • Due to, um, some factors (and despite several others), I started the idea of ebonifying him but couldn’t get it to snuff on my own.2012 September 23, Hellactic Translator Caphi, “Things of the Fortnight”, in https://shininggalaxy.wordpress.com/, people:

Forms of ebonify

present participleebonifying
past participleebonified
pastebonified
third-person singular present (rare)ebonifies

Origin of ebonify

From Ebonics + -ify.

Words formed from ebonify

Questions about ebonify

What does ebonify mean?
Ebonify means to adopt or imitate an African-American speech style, mannerisms, or mindset, particularly one associated with an urban vernacular or informal expression.
How do you use ebonify in a sentence?
At the time of the Ebonics controversy we had a number of supposed ebonifying translators which did not produce BEV or Jive or Hiphop.
What part of speech is ebonify?
Ebonify is a verb.
What is the past tense of ebonify?
The past tense of ebonify is ebonified.

Words near ebonify in the dictionary

  1. ebonics
  2. ebonies
  3. ebonification
  4. ebonified
  5. ebonifies
  6. ebonify
  7. ebonifying
  8. ebonise
  9. ebonised
  10. ebonises
  11. ebonising

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ebonify (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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Cite this entry: “ebonify.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ebonify. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.