fufu
Syllables: fu·fuUK/ˈfuːˌfuː/US/ˈfuˌfu/
More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations
fufu noun: a dish of boiled, mashed cassava mixed with plantain, yams, or other starchy vegetables, common as food in West and Equatorial Africa and the Caribbean, and sometimes sold in dry powdered or granulated form. Also the alternative form of fufufu.
Noun
fufu (uncountable)
- A dish of boiled, mashed cassava mixed with plantain, yams, or other starchy vegetables, common as food in West and Equatorial Africa and the Caribbean, and sometimes sold in dry powdered or granulated form.
- Africans generally serve highly seasoned stews with a starch - corn, millet, yams, cassava or rice - which they mash and whip to a paste, called fufu in West Africa. This is topped with a sauce known as palava.[1987 July 29, Steven Barboza, “Culinary Delights of Africa Reflect a Continent's Diversity”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
- “I want some real food,” Binta angrily said. “Like fufu and egusi soup.”2018, Nnedi Okorafor, Who Fears Death, HarperVoyager, page 192
- Synonyms:
- choke-me
Also used as
fufu is also the alternative form of fufufu.
Synonyms of fufu
Forms of fufu
| alternative form | foofoo |
|---|---|
| alternative form | foo-foo |
| alternative form | foufou |
Origin of fufu
From West African languages, such as Lingala fufú (“white-white”).
Borrowed from Japanese ふふ (fufu, onomatopoeia for laughter).
Words that rhyme with fufu
Questions about fufu
- What does fufu mean?
- Fufu means a dish of boiled, mashed cassava mixed with plantain, yams, or other starchy vegetables, common as food in West and Equatorial Africa and the Caribbean, and sometimes sold in dry powdered or granulated form.
- What part of speech is fufu?
- Fufu is a noun.
- How do you pronounce fufu?
- Fufu is pronounced /ˈfuːˌfuː/ (UK).
Words near fufu in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: fufu (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Izundu Okechukwu-Fufu.wav.
Cite this entry: “fufu.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/fufu. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.