Cushite
adj, name, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A member of one of various peoples native to the Horn of Africa, generally restricted to those that speak Cushitic languages. dated
- 1 Pertaining to the ancient people of the Horn of Africa, historically considered the descendants of biblical Cush. not-comparable
- 1 The Cushitic subfamily of languages.
"Similarly, in the Hamitic area, the Berber languages of the north-west are clearly distinguished from Ful, and these, again, from the Nilotic languages, which, in their turn, are quite distinct from the “Cushite” languages in the east (i.e. Somali, Galla, Saho, Bedauye, etc.)."
Example
More examples"Similarly, in the Hamitic area, the Berber languages of the north-west are clearly distinguished from Ful, and these, again, from the Nilotic languages, which, in their turn, are quite distinct from the “Cushite” languages in the east (i.e. Somali, Galla, Saho, Bedauye, etc.)."
Etymology
From Cush + -ite, coined in the 1820s. In the early 19th century, the term referred to the tan to dark-skinned people of the Horn of Africa (synonymous with Herodotus' Ethiopians) in general. The technical linguistic sense is due to Friedrich Müller (1876).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.