Negrito

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Either of two species of bird in the genus Lessonia.
  2. 2
    A member of a class of several ethnic groups who inhabit isolated parts of Southeast Asia.
  3. 3
    A Mexican shrub of the vervain family, Citharexylum berlandieri.

Synonyms

All synonyms
blackblack manboycaucasiancolored persondarky

Example

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"People have variety. My preferred model of anthropology has four subspecies of the human species: Mongoloid (variants Sundadont, Sinodont, and Super-Sinodont), Caucasoid (variants Nordic and Mediterranean), Negroid (variants Congoid and Capoid), and Australoid (variants Veddoid, Negrito, Papuan, Melanesian, Aborigine)."

Etymology

Borrowed from Philippine Spanish negrito (“short dark-skinned person”), from negro (“black person; dark-skinned person”) + -ito (“small; short; little”, diminutive suffix).

Related phrases

ethnic groupsoutheast asia

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