Dravidian

//dɹəˈvɪdɪən// adj, name, noun

adj, name, noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A member of any of several aboriginal peoples of India and Sri Lanka thought to have spread in India before Aryan migration.
  2. 2
    a large family of languages spoken in south and central India and Sri Lanka, as well as overseas in Malaysia and Singapore wordnet
  3. 3
    a member of one of the aboriginal inhabitants of India wordnet
Adjective
  1. 1
    Of or relating to the Dravidian people or language.
Proper Noun
  1. 1
    A family of related ethnicities and languages primarily in Southern India, Northeast Sri Lanka, and parts of Pakistan and Bangladesh.
  2. 2
    Any of the languages of these aboriginal peoples; Dravidic.

Synonyms

All synonyms
dravidian languagedravidiclanguage

Example

More examples

"Of the Dravidian languages, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, and Malayalam have the most speakers."

Etymology

From Sanskrit द्राविड (drāviḍa) + -ian. *tamiḻ > *damiḷ > damiḷa- / damila- and further, with the intrusive, 'hypercorrect' (or perhaps analogical) -r-, into dr(a/ā)viḍa.

Related phrases

Elamo-DravidianProto-Dravidiansri lanka

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