Read "Things fall apart" by Chinua Achebe online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Agbala: woman; also used of a man who has taken no title.
Chi: personal god.
efukfu: worthless man.
egwugwu: a masquerader who impersonates one of the ancestral spirits of the village.
ekwe: a musical instrument; a type of drum made from wood.
eneke-nti-oba: a kind of bird.
eze-agadi-nwayi: the teeth of an old woman.
iba: fever.
ilo: the village green, where assemblies for sports, discussions, etc., take place.
inyanga: showing off, bragging.
isa-ifi: a ceremony. If a wife had been separated from her husband for some time and were then to be re-united with him, this ceremony would be held to ascertain that she had not been unfaithful to him during the time of their separation.
iyi-uwa: a special kind of stone which forms the link between an ogbanje and the spirit world.
Only if the iyi-uwa were discovered and destroyed would the child not die.
jigida: a string of waist beads.
kotma: court messenger. The word is not of Ibo origin but is a corruption of "court messenger. " kwenu: a shout of approval and greeting.
ndichie: elders.
nna ayi: our father.
nno: welcome.
nso-ani: a religious offence of a kind abhorred by everyone, literally earth's taboo.
nza: a very small bird.