Word.ws English Dictionary

African-American

/ˈæ.fɹɪ.kən əˈmɛɹ.ɪ.kən/

African-American noun: a member of an ethnic group consisting of Americans of black African (particularly Niger-Congo) descent.

african-american: a member of an ethnic group consisting of Americans of black African (particularly Niger-Congo)...
Image: FEastman, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

African-American (plural African-Americans)

  1. A member of an ethnic group consisting of Americans of black African (particularly Niger-Congo) descent.
    Synonyms:
    Afro-American, Afromerican, unbleached American, BIPOC, BME, colored, colored person, minority, nonwhite, person of color
  2. (US, broadly, offensive, proscribed, sometimes) Any black American person; by extension, any black person.

Adjective

African-American (comparative more African-American, superlative most African-American)

  1. Of a person, pertaining to the African-American ethnicity.
    • The rioters overshadowed the message of peaceful protesters on prior days: They had called for justice for Gray, a 25-year-old African-American man who died from spinal injuries after police arrested him this month.2015 April 28, Ben Brumfield, “Baltimore riots: A few people tried to stop the unrest”, in CNN
    Synonyms:
    Afro-American
  2. (US, broadly, offensive, proscribed, sometimes) Black.
  3. Of or pertaining to the culture of African-American people.
    • African-American music

African-American meaning in Arabic

African-American in Arabic

A black American
أمريكي إفريقي, أمريكية إفريقية
American and black
أمريكي إفريقي, أمريكية إفريقية

Synonyms of African-American

4 more synonymsFewer synonyms

Forms of African-American

Noun
pluralAfrican-Americans
alternative formAfrican American
Adjective
comparativemore African-American
superlativemost African-American

Origin of African-American

Patterned on forms such as Irish-American, popularized by Jesse Jackson and in common use since the late 1980s.

Words formed from African-American

Phrases with African-American

Questions about African-American

What does African-American mean?
African-American means a member of an ethnic group consisting of Americans of black African (particularly Niger-Congo) descent.
What is African-American in Arabic?
African-American in Arabic is أمريكي إفريقي, أمريكية إفريقية. See African-American meaning in Arabic.
What part of speech is African-American?
African-American can be a noun or an adjective.
How do you pronounce African-American?
African-American is pronounced /ˈæ.fɹɪ.kən əˈmɛɹ.ɪ.kən/.
What is the plural of African-American?
The plural of African-American is African-Americans.

Words near African-American in the dictionary

  1. African wormwood
  2. African wormwoods
  3. African Zionism
  4. African't
  5. African'ts
  6. African-American
  7. African-American English
  8. African-American Vernacular English
  9. African-Americans
  10. African-like
  11. Africana

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: African-American (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Persent101-African-American.wav.

Cite this entry: “African-American.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/african-american. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.