Arab

//ˈæɹ.əb// adj, name, noun

adj, name, noun ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A Semitic person, whose forebears were from the Arabian Peninsula.
  2. 2
    billion (sense 1); 1,000,000,000; or with Indian digit grouping, 1,00,00,00,000. India, rare
  3. 3
    a spirited graceful and intelligent riding horse native to Arabia wordnet
  4. 4
    An inhabitant of Arabia or the Arab world.

    "This backlash also fails to take into account that Israel, for all its faults, is a multicultural society where almost half of graduating doctors today are Arabs or Druze."

  5. 5
    a member of a Semitic people originally from the Arabian peninsula and surrounding territories who speaks Arabic and who inhabits much of the Middle East and northern Africa wordnet
Show 3 more definitions
  1. 6
    A member of an Arabic-speaking community.
  2. 7
    An Arabian horse.

    "Having taken a very early breakfast, I mounted about eight o'clock my grey Arab, and without anything occurring worthy of note, killed the first three boars in the space of an hour, […]"

  3. 8
    A street Arab. archaic

    "a. 1892, Charles Spurgeon, a sermon You Christian people often see the little gutter children — the poor little arabs in the street — and you feel much pity for them, as well you may."

Adjective
  1. 1
    Of or pertaining to Arabs and their nations. not-comparable

    "The dispatches […] also exposed the blatant discrepancy between the west's professed values and actual foreign policies. Having lectured the Arab world about democracy for years, its collusion in suppressing freedom was undeniable as protesters were met by weaponry and tear gas made in the west, employed by a military trained by westerners."

Proper Noun
  1. 1
    A city in Marshall County, Alabama, United States.
  2. 2
    The Arabic language. dated, rare

    "Tarzan, who, by this time, with the assistance of Abdul, had picked up quite a smattering of Arab, questioned one of the younger men who had accompanied the sheik while the latter paid his respects to Captain Gerard."

Example

More examples

"Japan relies on Arab countries for oil."

Etymology

Etymology 1

Borrowed from Arabic عَرَب (ʕarab, “Arabs”) or back-formation from Arabic.

Etymology 2

Borrowed from Hindi अरब (arab).

Related phrases

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