What does "canaanite" mean?

A member of the ancient Semitic people who occupied Canaan before its conquest by Israelites.

What is a synonym for "canaanite"?

Common synonyms include: canaanean, canaanite language, chananean.

//ˈkeɪnənaɪt// adj, name, noun

adj, name, noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Noun

1
A member of the ancient Semitic people who occupied Canaan before its conquest by Israelites.
"Among the ancient Canaanites it was considered a divine honor to perform the sexual act."
2
the extinct language of the Semitic people who occupied Canaan before the Israelite conquest wordnet
3
A zealot or fanatic. broadly
4
a member of an ancient Semitic people who occupied Canaan before it was conquered by the Israelites wordnet
5
A member of the Canaanism movement.

Adjective

1
Of or pertaining to the people or language of Canaan.
"Unearthed in Lachish, a Canaanite city state in the second millennium BCE and the second most important city in the kingdom of Judah, the comb suggests that humans have endured lice for thousands of years and that even the wealthiest were not spared the grim infestations."
2
Of or pertaining to this sect or its followers; Canaanitic.
3
zealous or fanatical. broadly

Proper Noun

1
A subfamily of the Semitic languages, which were spoken by the ancient peoples of the Canaan region, including Canaanites, Israelites and Phoenicians.
"An affricated realization of *-z, as well as of voiceless *-s and emphatic *-ṣ-, is in any case reconstructed for Proto-Semitic, Northwest Semitic, and Canaanite, to which Phoenician belongs."

"Abram passed through the country unto the place of Sichem, as far as the noble vale: now the Canaanite was at that time in the land."

From Canaan + -ite.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.