Niger
name, noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 An Ethiopian herb, Guizotia abyssinica, grown for its seed and edible oil. uncountable
- 1 A country in West Africa, situated to the north of Nigeria. Official name: Republic of the Niger.
"An American aid worker who was kidnapped in Niger more than six years ago and held hostage by terrorists has been released, President Joe Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan tweeted on Monday."
- 2 A major river in West Africa that flows into the Gulf of Guinea in Nigeria.
"From here we can see the River Niger in the distance running across town, a long gleaming diamond in the horizon."
- 3 A state of Nigeria in the North Central geopolitical zone. Capital and largest city: Minna.
"Gunshots rang out in the capital Abuja and also in the neighboring Niger state as police lobbed tear gas to disperse defiant protesters. In Niger, at least six people are now feared dead, local media reported."
Example
More examples"Half a million children still face malnutrition in Niger."
Etymology
Commonly linked by folk etymology to Latin niger (“black”), which likely influenced the modern spelling. Some sources give the term to Tuareg roots, deriving it from a claimed gher n-gheren or egereou n-igereouen (“river of rivers”). Compare Tarifit iɣzar-n-iɣezran. Older sources derive Niger, via a series of mistranslations and geographic misplacements by Greek, Roman and Arab geographers, from Ptolemy's descriptions of the wadi Gir (in modern Algeria) and the "Lower Gir" (or "Ni-Gir") to the south.
From the name of the Niger River, from Latin Nigris. See further etymology at Niger.
Related phrases
More for "niger"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.