Word.ws English Dictionary

chanate

chanate noun: a kind of bird. Also the obsolete spelling of khanate.

chanate: a kind of bird
Image: Patrick Coin, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

chanate (plural chanates)

  1. a kind of bird
    • The farmer will hardly have sowed his wheat and maize fields when whole flocks of hungry chanates descend upon the land, scratch out the seeds, and eat them.1989 [1974–1795], Ignaz Pfefferkorn, translated by Theodore E. Treutlein, Sonora: A Description of the Province, translation of original in German, page 122
    • The black chanate birds were gathered, fluting their jangled morning songs under the pomegranates and figs as martin walked from the house.2017, Tom Lea, The Wonderful Country
    1. great-tailed grackle (Quiscalus mexicanus)
    2. red-winged blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus)
      • “A chanate has come to pay us a visit,” doña Gertrudis said. [...] “It’s a black bird with red shoulders,”2003, Rigoberto González, Crossing Vines: A Novel, page 67
  2. (derogatory, slang) black person
    • Pelaquillo's older brother was there. We called him Chanate, the name of a little black bird, because he was so dark.2012, Santana Acuña, Saul Diskin, Santana and Saúl: A Dual Memoir, page 8
  3. (slang) coffee
    • I’m sippin’ on some chanate [coffee] right now.2011 November 12, Chris Hoke, quoting Neaners, “Sacrament of Tears: Note from Solitary Confinement -- by Neaners”, in Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice, archived from the original on 21...

Noun (2)

chanate (uncountable)

  1. a kind of tree (Colophospermum mopane)
    • The dominant tree, often to the exclusion of many others, is Colophospermum mopane, commonly known as mopane or chanate.2010, Jonathan Timberlake, Emmanuel Chidumayo, Louis Sawadogo, “Distribution and Characteristics of African Dry Forests and Woodlands”, in Emmanuel N. Chidumayo, Davison J Gumbo, editors, The Dry...
    • The Chinese sell the rare exotic hardwood trees such as chanate, ebony, monzo (leadwood), panga panga, pau preto and wenge for a hundred times as much back in their home country2015 March 20, Andrea Dijkstra, “Mozambique will be stripped of its forests 'in just a few years'”, in Mail & Guardian
    Synonyms:
    mopane

Also used as

chanate is also the obsolete spelling of khanate.

Synonyms of chanate

Forms of chanate

pluralchanates

Origin of chanate

Borrowed from Spanish chanate, from a Nahuan language; cf. Classical Nahuatl tzanatl (“great-tailed grackle”).

Borrowed from Portuguese chanate, from an indigenous language of Mozambique.

Questions about chanate

What does chanate mean?
Chanate means a kind of bird.
What part of speech is chanate?
Chanate is a noun.
What is the plural of chanate?
The plural of chanate is chanates.

Words near chanate in the dictionary

  1. Chananean
  2. Chananeans
  3. Chananæan
  4. Chananæans
  5. chanas
  6. chanate
  7. chanates
  8. Chanbalig
  9. Chanbalik
  10. chanbara
  11. chanca piedra

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: chanate (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:

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