Yoruba

UK/ˈjɒɹʊbə//ˈjɔːɹəbə/

Yoruba noun: a member of an ethnic group or tribe living mainly in southwest Nigeria, southern Benin, and eastern Togo and, as well as in communities elsewhere in West Africa, United States, Brazil and Cuba.

Noun

Yoruba (plural Yoruba or Yorubas)

(in plural) A member of an ethnic group or tribe living mainly in southwest Nigeria, southern Benin, and eastern Togo and, as well as in communities elsewhere in West Africa, United States, Brazil and Cuba.
- Approximately 40 percent of Yorubas in Nigeria are Muslim and 60 percent are Christian. […] Its members express a strong preference for being among Yorubas during their worship service: “Since I am a Yoruba and we Yorubas have our own Church. . . ."2014 April 7, Claire L. Adida, Immigrant Exclusion and Insecurity in Africa, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 60

Proper noun

Yoruba

A sub-Saharan language. It belongs to the Benue-Congo branch of the Niger-Congo language family, and has nearly 40 million speakers in Nigeria, Benin, Togo, and Sierra Leone, as well as communities in The United States, Brazil and Cuba.
- In the parlour, she could hear Aunty Biola attempting to teach her father Yoruba, collapsing into helpless giggles whenever he mispronounced his vowels, giving them the flat English sound instead of lifting them upwards with the slight outward puff of breath that was required.2005, Helen Oyeyemi, The Icarus Girl, Bloomsbury, page 48
- Comparative wordlists of two dialects of Yoruba with Igala.2007 February 5, Roger Blench, “The Ayere and Ahan languages of Central Nigeria and their affinities”, in rogerblench.info, archived from the original on 17 Apr 2022, page 25
An African traditional religion which spawned various offshoots in the Americas in the 15th to 19th centuries, including santería and Lucumí. (See Yoruba religion.)
- The Yoruba practitioner describes it as a condition where a man's semen will flow out of the vagina before fertilization can take place.1979, Zacchaeus Akin Ademuwagun, John A. A. Ayoade, Ira E. Harrison, Dennis M. Warren, African Therapeutic Systems, Crossroads Press, page 130
- The Yoruba practitioner has no difficulty in knowing the difference between what we have classified as magic, medicine or sorcery.2003, P. Adelumo Dopamu, Samuel O. Oyewole, African Culture, Modern Science, and Religious Thought, African Centre for Religions and the Sciences, →ISBN, page 445

Yoruba meaning in Marathi

Yoruba in Marathi

a sub-Saharan language: योरुबा yorubā
family of religions: योरुबा yorubā

Forms of Yoruba

plural	Yoruba
plural	Yorubas
alternative form	Yorùbá

Origin of Yoruba

Borrowed from Yoruba Yorùbá.

Words formed from Yoruba

Questions about Yoruba

What does Yoruba mean?: Yoruba means a member of an ethnic group or tribe living mainly in southwest Nigeria, southern Benin, and eastern Togo and, as well as in communities elsewhere in West Africa, United States, Brazil and Cuba.
What is Yoruba in Marathi?: Yoruba in Marathi is योरुबा (yorubā). See Yoruba meaning in Marathi.
What part of speech is Yoruba?: Yoruba can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce Yoruba?: Yoruba is pronounced /ˈjɒɹʊbə/ (UK).
What is the plural of Yoruba?: The plural of Yoruba is Yoruba.

Words near Yoruba in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: Yoruba (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: 2026-09-02

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

Cite this entry: “Yoruba.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/yoruba. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.