#  Oxford Dictionary of African American English (ODAAE) 

 



##  The Oxford Dictionary of African American English 

 

 

       ![A few volumes of the Oxford English Dictionary on a bookshelf](/sites/g/files/omnuum10831/files/styles/hwp_21_9__1920x825/public/2025-08/OED2_volumes_0.jpg?h=b80ad4d4&itok=YgcuA7DT) 

 

 



 

 



Editor-in-Chief: **Henry Louis Gates, Jr.**

Oxford Languages, a division of Oxford University Press and publisher of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), and Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African & African American Research are delighted to announce the launch of a three-year research project, whose aim is to compile the Oxford Dictionary of African American English (ODAAE). The project is funded in part by grants from the Mellon and Wagner Foundations.

African American English, with its roots in African languages and creoles, has been a major influence on the development of English vocabulary, particularly in the 20th and 21st centuries. It has long contributed full categories of words and phrases that have had a profound impact on the way that English is used in the United States and worldwide.



 

 

##  External Links 

 



 [ About the ODAAE arrow\_circle\_right ](https://www.oed.com/discover/odaae) [ ODAAE FAQs arrow\_circle\_right ](https://www.oed.com/discover/odaae-faqs/) [ Recordings of ODAAE Events arrow\_circle\_right ](https://www.oed.com/discover/odaae-project-events/) [ 12-minute YouTube Documentary arrow\_circle\_right ](https://youtu.be/KGANtmPNhZg?si=3Y290tFAy9_5TVuf) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Working in collaboration with the editorial unit of the OED and supported by an advisory board of leading scholars on African American language and culture, the ODAAE is being compiled and edited by a team of researchers and editors at Oxford University Press and the Hutchins Center, spearheaded by Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Director of the Center and Alphonse Fletcher University Professor at Harvard. Through a combination of detailed scholarly research and an outreach program soliciting community contributions, the team will endeavor to record the most comprehensive, accurate and up-to-date picture of African American English to date.

Alongside meaning, pronunciation, spelling, usage, and history, each entry will be illustrated by quotations taken from real examples of language in use. This will serve to acknowledge the contributions of African-American writers, thinkers, and artists, as well as everyday African Americans, to the evolution of the English lexicon. Evidence will be gathered from such diverse sources as novels, academic research papers, newspapers and magazines, song lyrics, recipes, social media, and more.



 

   

At OUP we’re proud to be initiating this timely and important project with the team at Harvard. African American English has had a profound impact on the world’s most widely spoken language, yet much of it has been obscured. The ODAAE seeks to acknowledge this contribution more fully and formally and, in doing so, create a powerful tool for a new generation of researchers, students, and scholars to build a more accurate picture of how African American life has influenced how we speak, and therefore who we are.

 

Casper Grathwohl

President of Oxford Languages at Oxford University Press

 

 



 

 

 

   

Every speaker of American English borrows heavily from words invented by African Americans, whether they know it or not. Words with African origins such as ‘ ‘goober’, ‘gumbo’ and ‘okra’ survived the Middle Passage along with our African ancestors. And 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, neologisms that emerged out of the Black Experience in this country, over the last few hundred years. And while many scholars have compiled dictionaries of African American usage and vocabulary, no one has yet had the resources to undertake a large-scale, systematic study, based on historical principles, of the myriad contributions that African Americans have made to the shape and structure of the English language that Americans speak today. This project, at long last, will address that need.

 

Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Editor-in-Chief

 

 



 

 

 

##  ODAAE in the News 

 



  [### Axios: 'Henry Louis Gates Jr. to oversee new Oxford Dictionary of African American English'

 ](https://www.axios.com/2022/07/22/oxford-dictionary-african-american-english-gates) July 22, 2022 

 

   ![Henry Louis Gates, Jr.](/sites/g/files/omnuum10831/files/styles/hwp_16_9__480x270/public/hutchins/files/hlg5.jpg?itok=m4Rh2vVB) 

 



 

 

   [### Essence: 'Oxford University Press To Publish Dictionary Of African American English'

 ](https://www.essence.com/news/oxford-university-african-american-english/) June 21, 2022 

 

   ![Henry Louis Gates, Jr.](/sites/g/files/omnuum10831/files/styles/hwp_16_9__480x270/public/hutchins/files/hlg_02.jpg?itok=SDRbAIdx) 

 



 

 

   [### NBC News: 'Henry Louis Gates Jr. announced as editor-in-chief of the new Oxford Dictionary of African American English'

 ](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/henry-louis-gates-jr-announced-editor-chief-new-oxford-dictionary-afri-rcna39554) July 22, 2022 

 

   ![Henry Louis Gates, Jr.](/sites/g/files/omnuum10831/files/styles/hwp_16_9__480x270/public/hutchins/files/hlg6.jpg?itok=XDw48BTW) 

 



 

 

   [### New York Times: 'Hip, Woke, Cool: It’s All Fodder For the Oxford Dictionary of African American English'

 ](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/21/books/african-american-dictionary.html) July 21, 2022 

 

   ![Henry Louis Gates, Jr.](/sites/g/files/omnuum10831/files/styles/hwp_16_9__480x270/public/hutchins/files/hlgnyt_01.jpg?itok=spZ-BoRh) 

 



 

 

   [### The Grio: 'Henry Louis Gates, Oxford working to publish African American dictionary'

 ](https://thegrio.com/2022/07/21/henry-louis-gates-oxford-working-to-publish-african-american-dictionary/) July 21, 2022 

 

   ![Henry Louis Gates, Jr.](/sites/g/files/omnuum10831/files/styles/hwp_16_9__480x270/public/hutchins/files/hlg_03.jpg?itok=CAJeKzVT) 

 



 

 

   [### The Root: 'Sho You Right: The Oxford Dictionary of African American English is On The Way'

 ](https://www.theroot.com/sho-you-right-the-oxford-dictionary-of-african-america-1849325396) July 24, 2022 

 

   ![Books](/sites/g/files/omnuum10831/files/styles/hwp_16_9__480x270/public/hutchins/files/books.jpg?itok=G3mCIskx) 

 



 

 

  

 

 

 

 

   

The editing of the Oxford Dictionary of African American English will realize a dream I’ve nurtured since I first studied the pages of Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language: to research and compile fully and systematically the richness of African American English, using the lexicographical tools and historical principles that the Oxford English Dictionary embodies, including examples of usage in Black literature and discourse from their earliest manifestations to the present. This massive project draws upon decades of scholarship from the most sophisticated linguists, especially those colleagues who have graciously joined this project as members of our advisory board, as well as the vast academic resources at Harvard’s Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, and the crowd-sourced contributions of speakers of African American English as well.

 

Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Editor-in-Chief

 

 



 

 

 

   

African-American English is the most interesting dialect of American English on all levels, and yet remains misunderstood by the public. Even specialists in it have a fascinating mountain of material still to examine. I would feel incomplete to not participate in this project.

 

John McWhorter

Professor of Linguistics at Columbia University and ODAAE advisory board member