Hausa
Americannoun
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a member of an Indigenous people of northern Nigeria and southern Niger whose culture has been strongly influenced by Islam.
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the language of the Hausa people, belonging to the Chadic branch of the Afroasiatic family, widely used in Africa as a language of commerce.
noun
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a member of a Negroid people of W Africa, living chiefly in N Nigeria
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the language of this people: the chief member of the Chadic subfamily of the Afro-Asiatic family of languages. It is widely used as a trading language throughout W Africa and the S Sahara
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
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In an interview with BBC Hausa, Aliyu explained what happened after he was flagged down on a busy road.
From BBC ● Jul. 21, 2026
With some 80 million speakers of the north's Hausa language spread across west and central Africa -- not to mention the vast Nigerian diaspora around the world -- Kannywood's potential market is huge.
From Barron's ● Jan. 9, 2026
Most Nigerian films on major streamers like Netflix and Amazon Prime are from the country's richer south, where Hausa is a minority language.
From Barron's ● Jan. 9, 2026
The languages recorded included Kikuyu and Dholuo in Kenya, Hausa and Yoruba in Nigeria and isiZulu and Tshivenda in South Africa, some of which are spoken by millions of people.
From BBC ● Sep. 3, 2025
“The news is not good. The Hausa soldiers are close,” Aniekwena said.
From "Half of a Yellow Sun" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
In the top eight he had three Hausas, two Kanuris, one Igbo, one Yoruba and one Nupe.
From BBC ● May 26, 2025
It gave rise to the authorities' belief that these communities, including the Hausas, were behind the opposition protests - and some of them were expelled from Khartoum and its twin city Omdurman.
From BBC ● Jul. 22, 2022
But the Chadian government refused to allow them passage, which led to a community of Hausas eventually settling in Darfur and other parts of Sudan.
From BBC ● Jul. 22, 2022
The Hausas in the north, who furnish the backbone of Britain's tough West African Rifles, are Moslems.
From Time Magazine Archive
The men were all Hausas and Yorubas, with the exception of one company of Neupas.
From Through Three Campaigns A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti by Paget, Walter
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
