The phrase “democratising meaning” may sound attractive in a democratic society, but language does not work that way. A word does not become a correct Yoruba word simply because thousands of people choose or accept it on Facebook, nor does a linguistic coinage become legitimate because an audience votes for it. Language is certainly created and developed by its speakers, but the creation of a word and the validation of its meaning are not matters of popular voting.

This distinction has become increasingly important in the current debate over the coinage of Yoruba equivalents for modern English concepts. There are now individuals, organisations and social-media platforms doing commendable work to expand the vocabulary of Yorùbá, particularly in science, technology and contemporary knowledge. That effort is necessary. A living language cannot remain permanently confined to the vocabulary of the past. But the urgency to modernise Yoruba must not become an excuse for manufacturing words whose structures, meanings or semantic relationships are defective and then asking the public to determine whether they are correct.

Take, for example, the proposed Yoruba equivalent of “lift” as àgùnsọ́. The controversy surrounding this word is not merely a quarrel over whether people like the word. It raises a much more fundamental linguistic question: Does the proposed coinage accurately represent the concept it is supposed to name? If the intention is to name an elevator, one has to ask what an elevator actually does. It carries people and objects from one level to another. It can take a person upward and bring the same person downward. A word constructed around the idea of ‘gùn’ — to climb or ascend — and ‘sọ̀’ in the sense of going down may appear to capture the two directions, but that is precisely where the problem of semantic precision arises. Is the intended object being named according to its essential function, its movement, its mechanism, or merely two contrasting movements associated with it?

There are already alternative descriptive formations circulating in Yoruba-language technology discussions, including ‘ẹ̀rọ agbéniròkè’ for elevator. Such formations may not necessarily be perfect either, but they demonstrate an important principle: a technical term should be subjected to morphological and semantic scrutiny before it is presented as an established equivalent.

The central problem, therefore, is not that Yoruba should not create new words. Yoruba must create new words. The problem is the growing tendency to confuse coinage with correct coinage. Anybody can invent a word. Not everybody can successfully create a word. If I wake up tomorrow and decide that “computer” should be called ‘àgbàdo’, that is a coinage. But the fact that I have coined it does not make it a Yoruba equivalent of computer. If I persuade a thousand people to use it on Facebook, I have demonstrated popularity, not necessarily linguistic validity. If ten thousand people begin using it, we have evidence of emerging usage, but we still need to ask how the word relates semantically and morphologically to the thing it represents.

This is where the distinction between language creation, language usage and lexicographical authority becomes crucial. A dictionary does not create reality simply by listing a word. At the same time, a Facebook poll cannot replace lexicographical scholarship.

Language is indeed democratic in one sense: speakers ultimately determine which expressions survive. But it is not democratic in the political sense. There is no ballot box in which 51 percent of Yoruba speakers can vote to make an erroneous definition correct.
Imagine asking Nigerians to vote on whether “indigenous” means “foreign” or whether “descending” means “ascending.” Popularity would not change the semantic relationship between the words. Meaning is constrained by usage, context, morphology, history and the conceptual relationship between a word and the thing it denotes.

This is particularly important in Yoruba because Yoruba is a tonal and morphologically sensitive language. A change in tone can change meaning. A change in the root can change the semantic direction of a construction. The fact that two Yoruba morphemes can be joined together does not automatically mean that the resulting compound expresses the desired concept.
This is why words such as ẹ̀gbẹ́lẹ̀gbẹ́, ẹ̀lọ́, ègé and other recent formations need to be examined individually rather than defended simply because they were coined for a useful purpose.

Consider ègé, for example. The word itself is not inherently problematic simply because someone has assigned it a contemporary technical or sporting meaning. Existing Yoruba sources already recognise ègé in the sense of a slice, piece, wedge or section, derived from gé, “to cut”; contemporary lexical sources also record a sporting sense connected with dribbling.

That example teaches us something important: a new sense can emerge from an existing Yoruba word through semantic extension, but the relationship between the original word and the new sense should be intelligible and defensible. There is a world of difference between extending the meaning of an existing word through a recognisable semantic pathway and arbitrarily attaching an unrelated meaning to an existing word because its sound appears convenient.
Suppose somebody takes the Yoruba word ilé, meaning house, and decides that from today it shall mean “computer” because a computer is a place where information is stored. That is not clever coinage. It is semantic impunity.

Likewise, suppose somebody chooses an existing Yoruba word meaning “rain” and assigns it the meaning “internet” merely because both involve something coming down from above. One might invent an elaborate explanation for the connection, but linguistic ingenuity does not automatically equal linguistic validity. A technical term must be more than imaginative. This is where many contemporary Yoruba coinages deserve rigorous scrutiny.

There are at least six questions that should be asked before a new Yoruba word is accepted as a serious technical equivalent.

First, what exactly does the English word mean? This sounds elementary, but it is frequently ignored. English words are often polysemous. “Lift”, for instance, can mean to raise something, to steal something, to give somebody a ride, to remove something, to improve something, or, in British English, an elevator. Therefore, asking for “the Yoruba word for lift” without identifying the particular sense is already linguistically inadequate. The Yoruba equivalent of lift as a verb may be completely different from the Yoruba equivalent of lift as an elevator.
This is why translating words mechanically from one language into another is dangerous. Languages translate meanings, not merely words.

Second, does the proposed Yoruba word actually capture the concept? If an elevator is named after only one of its movements, the coinage deserves questioning. If a smartphone is named merely as a “telephone that moves”, does that sufficiently distinguish it from every other portable telephone? If a refrigerator is called ẹ̀rọ amóúnjẹ tútù, the semantic construction is immediately understandable because it identifies a machine associated with keeping food cold. Similar descriptive Yoruba formations are already used in lists of technology vocabulary.

Third, is the morphology legitimate? Yoruba has its own mechanisms for forming nouns from verbs and for constructing compounds. We cannot simply take two attractive Yoruba words, put them beside each other and declare the resulting expression to be a technical term. A word must obey the grammatical and morphological tendencies of the language. The fact that mọ̀ means “know” and ìmọ̀ can mean “knowledge”, or that jókòó relates to sitting and ìjókòó can denote a seat or sitting, illustrates that Yoruba already has productive mechanisms for deriving words. Similar derivational patterns are documented in Yoruba vocabulary discussions.

The task of the modern coinage community is therefore not to invent a new system of word formation but to understand the system Yoruba already possesses.

Fourth, does the word create ambiguity with an existing Yoruba word? This is a major problem that should never be ignored. A newly coined technical word should not casually hijack an established Yoruba word and give it an unrelated meaning. Doing so creates confusion, especially in education.
Imagine a Yoruba-speaking child reading a textbook and encountering a familiar Yoruba word used in an entirely unfamiliar sense. Unless the textbook provides an explanation, the child is not learning Yoruba science; the child is being asked to learn a private code invented by the textbook writer. That is not language development. It is terminology imposed on learners.

Fifth, can the coinage survive outside its original creator’s platform? This is where social media can be dangerously deceptive.
A Facebook page can introduce 500 words in a week. Its followers can applaud all 500. But the real test begins when those words leave the page. Will Yoruba teachers use them? Will university lecturers use them? Will translators use them? Will broadcasters use them? Will authors use them? Will ordinary Yoruba speakers understand them without explanation? Will different Yoruba-speaking communities recognise the same meaning Will dictionaries eventually record them? Will they remain useful ten, twenty or fifty years from now? That is the real test.

A Facebook comment section is not a dictionary committee. And a Facebook audience is not a linguistic court.

Sixth, does the word have a defensible relationship with the cultural and conceptual world of Yoruba? This does not mean that every modern Yoruba word must have existed in precolonial Yoruba. That would be absurd. There was no traditional Yoruba word for “internet”, “satellite”, “computer”, “smartphone”, “laser”, “nuclear reactor” or “artificial intelligence” because the concepts themselves were unknown in the traditional Yoruba environment. The answer is not to freeze Yoruba in the nineteenth century. The answer is to extend Yoruba intelligently.

Every living language does this. English itself constantly creates words, borrows words, combines words, shortens words, extends meanings and adopts expressions from other languages. Computer, telephone, television, internet, software, smartphone and thousands of other expressions were not handed down from Shakespeare. They emerged because society developed new concepts requiring names.

Yoruba deserves exactly the same opportunity. But modernisation does not mean abandoning standards. In fact, the more technical the subject, the more important precision becomes. If a Yoruba textbook says àgùnsọ́ and a student understands it to mean “a machine that takes somebody upward”, what happens when the same machine takes the person downward? If the coinage is defended by saying that the word contains both gùn and sọ̀, we must still ask whether Yoruba speakers would naturally understand that compound as “elevator”.
This is the difference between etymological explanation and actual lexical meaning.

One can construct a perfectly logical explanation after inventing a word. That does not prove that the word naturally expresses the intended concept. For instance, someone could invent ẹ̀rọ amóhunmàwòrán for television and explain that it means “the machine that produces sound and pictures.” That is semantically transparent and therefore potentially useful. Indeed, similar descriptive formations have been proposed for television and other technological objects.

But another person could invent a word whose internal components appear clever only after the creator explains them. That is much weaker. A good coinage should ideally explain itself, or at least become readily intelligible once defined.

There is also another dangerous misconception: that because language belongs to its speakers, anything speakers choose to call something is automatically correct. No!

Speakers have enormous power over language, but individual speakers do not have unlimited power over meaning. If I call a chair a table, I have not changed the meaning of chair. I have merely used the wrong word.
If ten people repeat the error, it remains an error. If ten thousand people repeat it, it becomes an interesting linguistic phenomenon. If millions of people eventually adopt it for generations, then linguists may conclude that the language has undergone semantic change and that the new meaning has become established. That is an entirely different proposition. Usage can eventually change meaning, but popularity does not instantly confer legitimacy.

This distinction is especially important for Yoruba because the language is already under enormous pressure from English. We should not respond to English dominance by weakening the intellectual standards of Yoruba terminology. Our objective should be to make Yoruba capable of expressing mathematics, physics, chemistry, medicine, engineering, philosophy, law, technology, economics and artificial intelligence but not merely to produce Yoruba-looking words.
There is a difference between Yorubanising English terminology and Yorubaising knowledge. The former may involve replacing an English word with an arbitrary Yoruba construction. The latter requires understanding the concept deeply enough to express it naturally within the resources of Yoruba.

This is why the work of terminology development should not be reduced to social-media competitions: “What should we call this in Yoruba?” followed by voting. Let the public contribute. Absolutely. Let teachers contribute. Let scientists contribute. Let native speakers contribute. Let writers contribute. Let linguists contribute. Let translators contribute. Let technologists contribute. But after everybody has contributed, someone must still subject the proposed terminology to linguistic examination. Democracy can generate candidates; it cannot replace scholarship.

There is another important point. We should not reject every new word merely because an older generation did not use it. That would be another form of linguistic conservatism.
Words such as tẹlifíṣọ̀nù, kọ̀ǹpútà, fóònù, kọ̀ǹtà, mótò, ràídíò and numerous other borrowed or adapted forms demonstrate that Yoruba can accommodate foreign concepts. A language does not become impure because it borrows. Borrowing is one of the oldest mechanisms of language development.
Nor should we assume that a descriptive coinage is automatically superior to a loanword.

Sometimes fóònù may be more natural and more durable than an unnecessarily elaborate Yoruba construction. Sometimes, a descriptive compound may be better because it immediately communicates the function of the object. Sometimes, an existing Yoruba word can be semantically extended. Sometimes borrowing is best.

The question should always be: which solution serves Yoruba best? Not “Which word can we invent?” That is the intellectual shift we need. The people involved in Yoruba terminology development deserve encouragement, not ridicule. Their instinct is correct: Yoruba must be equipped to speak about the modern world. But good intentions cannot exempt anybody from linguistic criticism. Indeed, the more influential a platform becomes, the greater its responsibility to distinguish between an experimental coinage and an established Yoruba equivalent.
A responsible terminology platform could even label its words appropriately: proposed term, experimental coinage, recommended equivalent, attested traditional term, or established usage. That would immediately make the conversation more scholarly.
The public should also be told when there are competing alternatives and why one is preferred. That is far better than presenting a newly invented word as though the Yoruba-speaking world had already unanimously agreed upon it.

Ultimately, Yoruba belongs to all Yoruba speakers, but that does not mean that its grammar, semantics and lexicon are governed by plebiscite. We cannot put a word on trial before a Facebook audience and declare it correct because the majority clicked “like”. We cannot ask ordinary speakers to vote between two technical terms without first giving them the linguistic evidence necessary to understand the distinction. We cannot confuse familiarity with correctness, popularity with legitimacy, or invention with innovation.

A language grows through its speakers, but it is studied through its structure. A language evolves through usage, but its evolution can be analysed. A language accepts new words, but not every new word is automatically good. And a language can be democratically used without having its meanings democratically legislated.

The future of Yoruba terminology therefore requires neither linguistic dictatorship nor linguistic anarchy. It requires scholarship, experimentation, consultation, evidence, usage and time. Let people coin. Let people propose. Let people argue. Let people test the words. But let linguists examine them. Let teachers test them. Let native speakers interrogate them. Let writers use them.
Let time determine whether they survive.
And let dictionaries eventually record what has genuinely become part of the language.
That is how a language grows.

We must modernise Yoruba, but we must not modernise it into meaninglessness. We must create new words, but we must not create new meanings merely because we can. And above all, we must never confuse the freedom to coin a word with the authority to declare that the word is correct.