Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A large family of languages spoken especially in southern India and northern Sri Lanka that includes Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and Kannada.
- n. A member of any of the peoples that speak one of the Dravidian languages, especially a member of one of the pre-Indo-European peoples of southern India.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Of or pertaining to Dravida or Dravira, an ancient province of southern India: specifically applied to a family of tongues spoken in southern India and Ceylon, supposed by some to be Scythian or Ural-Altaic, by others to constitute an independent group of languages. It includes Tamil, Telugu, Canarese, Malayālam or Malabar, Tulu, etc. Also called Tamilian.
Wiktionary
- n. A family of related ethnicities and languages primarily in Southern India, Northeast Sri Lanka, and parts of Pakistan, and Bangladesh.
- n. Any of the languages of these aboriginal peoples; Dravidic.
- n. A member of any of several aboriginal peoples of India and Sri Lanka thought to have spread in India before Aryan migration.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. (Ethnol.) Of or pertaining to the Dravida.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a member of one of the aboriginal races of India (pushed south by Caucasians and now mixed with them)
- n. a large family of languages spoken in south and central India and Sri Lanka
Etymologies
- From Sanskrit द्राविड (drāviḍa), drāvḷa, hypercorrection of Prakrit dāviḍa, dāmiḷo, damiḷa, from Old Tamil tamil (mod. Tamiẓ). (Wiktionary)
- From Sanskrit drāviḍaḥ, a Dravidian. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“DMK is the only party that has fully understood the true meaning of the word Dravidian and establishing the ideals," he said, while admitting people from other parties from Namakkal and”
“And most southern Indians are "Dravidian"--very dark skinned people.”
A tiger escaped from its enclosure and roamed around the San Francisco Zoo preying on human beings.
“In south India, a new identity called Dravidian Christianity is being constructed.”
The Huffington Post: Rajiv Malhotra: How Evangelists Invented 'Dravidian Christianity'
“A new religion called "Dravidian Christianity" has been invented through a sudden upsurge of writings designed to "discover" the existence of quasi-Christianity in Tamil history prior to the coming of the "Aryan" Brahmins.”
The Huffington Post: Rajiv Malhotra: How Evangelists Invented 'Dravidian Christianity'
“Brahui tribe in Baluchistan who speak a Dravidian language but have no physical resemblance to other Dravidian races cannot be satisfactorily explained, but, as he points out, this is no reason for holding that the whole body of speakers of Dravidian languages entered India from the north-west, and, with the exception of this small group of Brahuis, penetrated to the south and settled there without leaving any traces of their passage.”
The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV)
“In his valedictory address, SVU Vice-Chancellor N. Prabhakara Rao called Dravidian culture not only the greatest, but also one of the ancient in the world.”
“The reason for speculating that the whole of the land-mass was once Dravidian speaking is due to the fact that even today, sections of the Baluch population speak a Dravidian language.”
“The Dravidian Christianity movement has organized an entire series of international conferences over the past decade, where its scholars make outlandish revisions to Indian religious history.”
The Huffington Post: Rajiv Malhotra: How Evangelists Invented 'Dravidian Christianity'
“The Dravidian race theory originated in 19th century European scholarship when colonial and evangelical interests used linguistics and ethnic studies to formulate imaginary histories and races.”
The Huffington Post: Rajiv Malhotra: How Evangelists Invented 'Dravidian Christianity'
“The Aryan/Dravidian constructs are mutually dependent, and have been very successfully used to generate conflict, including violence as in Sri Lanka in recent years.”
The Huffington Post: Rajiv Malhotra: How Evangelists Invented 'Dravidian Christianity'
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