Word.ws English Dictionary

carib

/ˈkæɹɪb/UK/ˈkæɹɪb/

carib noun: a hummingbird of the genus Eulampis.

Noun (1)

carib (plural caribs)

  1. A hummingbird of the genus Eulampis.

Noun (2) capitalized: Carib

Carib (plural Caribs or Carib)

  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...
    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.

Proper noun capitalized: Carib

Carib

  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.

Forms of carib

pluralcaribs
pluralCaribs
pluralCarib

Origin of carib

Borrowed from Spanish Caribe, likely from a Kalinago term corresponding to karifuna (“Kalinago person”) in modern Kalinago, a borrowing from a Cariban language, ultimately from Proto-Cariban *karipona (“person”). Compare Kari'na karìna (“Carib person”). Doublet of cannibal, caribe, Carijona, Galibi, Garifuna, and Kari'na.

Words formed from carib

Phrases with carib

Questions about carib

What does carib mean?
Carib means a hummingbird of the genus Eulampis.
What part of speech is carib?
Carib can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce carib?
Carib is pronounced /ˈkæɹɪb/ (UK).
What is the plural of carib?
The plural of carib is caribs.

Words near carib in the dictionary

  1. cariamid
  2. cariamids
  3. Carian
  4. Carianne
  5. Carians
  6. carib
  7. Carib physa
  8. Carib physae
  9. Carib physas
  10. Carib.
  11. Cariban

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: carib (page history and authors); Carib (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)-Flame, not lame-Carib.wav.

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