Carib
name, noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A member of one of a number of Amerindian peoples who inhabit the coast of Central and South America and the Lesser Antilles.
"Mr. Dougherty had intended to make the outing with his unwonted wife an inconspicuous one. Uxoriousness was a weakness that the precepts of the Caribs did not countenance."
- 2 A hummingbird of the genus Eulampis.
- 3 the family of languages spoken by the Carib wordnet
- 4 A member of one of a number of Amerindian peoples who inhabit the coast of Central and South America and the Lesser Antilles.; A member of the mainland or ‘proper’ Caribs (Kari'na), a Cariban people who inhabit the north coast of South America, in parts of Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana.
"Another people, the Surinen, lived near the coast. Like the Arawaks and the Caribs, they had migrated northward into Suriname. The Arawak and Carib peoples greatly outnumbered the Surinen. The Surinen were disappearing by the late 1400s."
- 5 a member of an American Indian peoples of northeastern South America and the Lesser Antilles wordnet
Show 2 more definitions
- 6 A member of one of a number of Amerindian peoples who inhabit the coast of Central and South America and the Lesser Antilles.; A member of the Kalinago people of the Lesser Antilles, an Arawakan people who took heavy cultural influence from the mainland Caribs and so were formerly known as Island Caribs.
- 7 A member of one of a number of Amerindian peoples who inhabit the coast of Central and South America and the Lesser Antilles.; A member of the Garifuna people of Honduras, historically known as Black Caribs, descendants of mixed Kalinago people and Africans who were deported to the Central American mainland in the 18th century.
- 1 Any of the languages of these people.; The Kari'na or Carib language proper, a Cariban language.
- 2 Any of the languages of these people.; The Kalinago or Island Carib language, an unrelated Arawakan language.
- 3 Any of the languages of these people.; The Garifuna language, an offshoot of Kalinago.
Example
More examples"Mr. Dougherty had intended to make the outing with his unwonted wife an inconspicuous one. Uxoriousness was a weakness that the precepts of the Caribs did not countenance."
Etymology
Borrowed from Spanish Caribe, likely from a Kalinago term corresponding to karifuna (“Kalinago person”) in modern Kalinago, a borrowing from a Cariban language, ultimately from Proto-Cariban *karipona (“person”). Compare Kari'na karìna (“Carib person”). Doublet of cannibal, caribe, Carijona, Galibi, Garifuna, and Kari'na.
Related phrases
More for "carib"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.