'Detooth', 'bench' among Ugandan words integrated into Oxford English Dictionary

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In the latest updates announced by Oxford English Dictionary (0ED), Ugandan English words have been integrated into the prestigious English book.

The integrated words according to the September 24 , 2025, announcement among others include detooth, vacist, beep, bench, electro Acholi, in the music world, among others.

“In its September update last year, the OED took a significant stride in tracking the growth of English vocabulary worldwide by publishing the first of a new series of quarterly updates for World Englishes. These included new and revised entries for words from the Caribbean, East Africa, New Zealand, and Wales,” Oxford highlighted.

According to OED, which has since released three further updates, all featuring a colourful assortment of distinctive words and phrases used by English speakers across the globe.

“In this year’s September update, we go back to where our journey started as we present a new batch of Caribbean, East African, New Zealand, and Welsh additions and revisions to the dictionary, now also joined by recent inclusions from the Isle of Man,” it adds.

The OED in its latest update, brands the incorporated English spoken in Uganda as Uglish (2000), which incorporates elements of Luganda and other Ugandan languages.

In its elaboration, Oxford highlights English as an official language in this landlocked East African nation (Uganda) of nearly 50 million people.

It discloses that a few of the recently added words to the OED show idiosyncratic use of English words, particularly in the East African region.

The verb 'bench' (2000) and its noun form 'benching' (2001), according to Oxford, are used colloquially in Ugandan English to refer to a man, flirting or engaging in a casual sexual or romantic relationship with a woman.

While in original English, to detooth someone or something is to extract a person or animal’s tooth or to make them toothless, in both the literal and figurative sense. However, Oxford recognises that in Uganda, it took on a completely different meaning modelled after the Luganda verb (o)kukuula: To provide (someone) with companionship or sexual favours in exchange for money or luxury items; put more simply, to gold-dig. 

The other word adopted by the prestigious English book is 'Vacist' (2004), a student who has completed a level of education and is on holiday from school while waiting to receive the results of the national examinations and advance to a higher level.

“Vacists in Uganda usually keep themselves busy by applying to university, looking for a job, or learning new skills,” Oxford says.

Acholi style

It adds that from the world of music, ‘we’ have added electro Acholi (2017), which is a style of dance music characterised by the use of a synthesised backing track and electronically created beat combined with elements from the traditional music of Northern Uganda, particularly of the Acholi people.

“One of the traditional instruments of the Acholi is the lukeme (1953), a small handheld musical instrument consisting of a series of wooden or metal keys attached to a resonator, with one end of each key free to be plucked with the thumb and forefingers,” the statement added.

The updates, according to Oxford, also feature words used across East Africa, such as Umuganda and beep.

“In East Africa (and also in West Africa), to beep (2007) someone is not to send them a message to their beeper or even to honk your car horn, but to call their mobile phone and hang up immediately, typically as a request for a call back,” it indicated.

It added that in Rwanda, Umuganda (1977), a borrowing from the Kinyarwanda language, refers to unpaid work carried out by an individual for the benefit of the community, typically involving cleaning up public areas or working in construction or agriculture, as well as to an instance of undertaking such work.

“It is also what Rwandans call the last Saturday of every month on which they are required by law to perform this community service,” it said.