noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   A member of any of the African ethnic groups that speak a Bantu language. countable
2. 2
   a family of languages widely spoken in the southern half of the African continent wordnet
3. 3
   The largest African language family of the Niger-Congo group, spoken in much of Sub-Saharan Africa. uncountable
4. 4
   a member of any of a large number of linguistically related peoples of Central and South Africa wordnet

Adjective

1. 1
   of or relating to the African people who speak one of the Bantoid languages or to their culture wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms

bantoid languagesintu

Example

More examples

"The Bantu languages are a subfamily of the Niger-Congo languages."

Etymology

Borrowed from Proto-Bantu *bàntʊ̀ pl (“people”), as reconstructed by the 19th-century linguist Wilhelm Bleek.

Related phrases

Semi-Bantuniger congosub saharan

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