Yoruba

plural Yorubas · alternative Yorùbá

1. in pluralA 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

alternative Yorùbá

1. 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.

   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

   1 more example

   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

2. An African traditional religion which spawned various offshoots in the Americas in the 15th to 19th centuries, including santería and Lucumí. (See Yoruba religion.)

   She was not a Yoruba practitioner but nevertheless had asked for a “birth reading” for her newborn daughter.

   2012, Velma E. Love, Divining the Self: A Study in Yoruba Myth and Human Consciousness, Penn State Press, →ISBN, page 25

   3 more examples

   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

   This is because when the Yoruba practitioner heals a stomach ache, he uses medicine, when he protects someone from accident, he uses magic, and when he invokes for the purpose of harming or killing a person, he uses sorcery.

   2011, Philemon Omerenma Amanze, African Traditional Medicine, Author House, →ISBN, page 20