Sálúbàtà — Sandal
Category: Everyday Life
Sandals or slippers, worn as everyday footwear.
A loanword adapted through trade contact (compare Portuguese/Spanish "sapato"/"zapato"), now a fully everyday Yorùbá word.
Sálúbàtà is a loanword that entered Yorùbá through centuries of coastal trade contact, likely tracing back to Portuguese or Spanish "sapato"/"zapato" (shoe) — part of a small set of everyday Yorùbá words rooted in early European trade languages.
It now functions as a fully ordinary Yorùbá word for sandals or slippers, with no trace in everyday use of its foreign origin — a good example of how loanwords get absorbed so completely that most speakers never think of them as "borrowed" at all.
Example: Mo fẹ́ ra sálúbàtà tuntun fún ìgbà ẹ̀rùn. — "I want to buy new sandals for the dry season."
Related words:
- Bàtà — Shoe, the more general word for footwear