adj ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective

1. 1
   Of or relating to languages of the Cariban family, a family of Amerindian languages spoken in northeastern South America, characterized by small phonemic inventories, split ergativity, broadly left-branching word order (SOV and OVS, with postpositions), portmanteau agreement, and marking of possession on the possessed noun. not-comparable
2. 2
   Of or relating to the peoples who speak these languages. not-comparable
3. 3
   Of or relating to the Carib people (in all senses, whether linguistically Cariban or Arawakan). not-comparable

Etymology

From Carib + -an.

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