Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A member of a people of Carib, Arawak, and African ancestry living along the Caribbean coast of Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, and Nicaragua. The Garifuna were deported to the area in the late 1700s after their defeat by the British on the island of St. Vincent, where shipwrecked and escaped African slaves had intermarried with the indigenous population beginning in the early 1600s.
  • noun The Arawakan language spoken by the Garifuna.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • proper noun An ethnic group in the Caribbean area, descended from a mix of Amerindian and African people, with many in Central America and the United States.
  • proper noun The language of the Garífuna people.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[American Spanish Garífuna, from Proto-Carib *karipona, Carib.]

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