From Pholourie to Cou-Cou: New Caribbean Words Enter the Oxford English Dictionary

The Oxford English Dictionary has once again widened its embrace of World Englishes, unveiling a September update that celebrates the vibrancy and diversity of global vocabulary. This latest installment returns to regions highlighted in last year’s launch — the Caribbean, East Africa, New Zealand, and Wales — now joined by the Isle of Man, with dozens of new and revised entries.

The additions underscore how English adapts and flourishes across cultures, borrowing from local languages, traditions, and everyday life.

Nowhere is that more evident than in the Caribbean, where cuisine, folklore, and colloquial expression have shaped an unmistakable lexicon. The OED’s newest entries bring words from the street stalls, kitchens, and communities of the region into one of the world’s most authoritative language records.

Food plays a starring role. Among the new entries is bulla, a small round Jamaican cake made with molasses, spices, and sometimes coconut or pineapple, first recorded in English in 1940. Trinidad and Tobago contributes buss up shut, the beloved flaky roti dish whose torn layers resemble a ragged shirt. There’s also pholourie, fried split-pea dough balls usually paired with chutney — a word with roots in Hindi and Bengali that has appeared in Trinidadian calypso lyrics since the 1930s. Barbados lends cou-cou, the firm cornmeal-and-okra dish often stirred with a cou-cou stick, while the more familiar saltfish, dating to the sixteenth century, earns a refined Caribbean definition.

But the update moves beyond the table. Trinidadian culture also gives us bobolee, once an effigy of Judas burned on Good Friday and later a term for any scapegoat or dupe, and to cry long water, meaning to weep theatrically. Broughtupsy, recorded in the 1970s, captures the idea of manners born of a good upbringing. And from across the region comes carry-go-bring-come, a serial-verb phrase turned noun for gossipers who ferry tales from one corner to the next, with local variations echoing across islands.

In total, the OED’s new Caribbean entries include bobolee, broughtupsy, bulla, buss up shut, carry-go-bring-come, cou-cou, cou-cou stick, Jamaican Creole, pholourie, saltfish, tantie, and the phrase to “cry long water.” Revised entries include curaçao and guava.

For the OED, this is more than an update — it is a recognition that the English language is continually being remade by its global speakers. And for the Caribbean, it is an affirmation that the words born of its kitchens, streets, and storytellers are now firmly enshrined in the record of world English.