carib

plural caribs

1. A hummingbird of the genus Eulampis.

plural Caribs

1. A member of one of a number of Amerindian peoples who inhabit the coast of Central and South America and the Lesser Antilles.

   Mr. Dougherty had intended to make the outing with his unwonted wife an inconspicuous one. Uxoriousness was a weakness that the precepts of the Caribs did not countenance.

   1903–1906, O. Henry [pseudonym; William Sydney Porter], “Dougherty’s Eye-opener”, in The Voice of the City, complete edition, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Doran & Company, published 1908, →OCLC, pages 32–33

   1. A member of the mainland or ‘proper’ Caribs (Kari'na), a Cariban people who inhabit the north coast of South America, in parts of Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana.

      Another people, the Surinen, lived near the coast. Like the Arawaks and the Caribs, they had migrated northward into Suriname. The Arawak and Carib peoples greatly outnumbered the Surinen. The Surinen were disappearing by the late 1400s.

      2009 January 8, Thomas Streissguth, Suriname in Pictures, →ISBN, page 20

   2. A member of the Kalinago people of the Lesser Antilles, an Arawakan people who took heavy cultural influence from the mainland Caribs and so were formerly known as Island Caribs.
   3. A member of the Garifuna people of Honduras, historically known as Black Caribs, descendants of mixed Kalinago people and Africans who were deported to the Central American mainland in the 18th century.

1. Any of the languages of these people.
   1. The Kari'na or Carib language proper, a Cariban language.
   2. The Kalinago or Island Carib language, an unrelated Arawakan language.
   3. The Garifuna language, an offshoot of Kalinago.