Word.ws English Dictionary

Trini

/ˈtɹɪni/

Trini noun: a Trinidadian.

Noun

Trini (plural Trinis)

  1. (informal) A Trinidadian.

Proper noun (1)

Trini

  1. (informal) The island of Trinidad.
    • Summer jobs in Trini are hard to find. A friend of mine from Case Western got an internship/summer job only through some real chain pulling. […] Sad but true, 90% of the people who graduate and get jobs in Trinidad know someone.1994 May 18, D.HERBERT, “Summer Jobs in T&T?”, in soc.culture.caribbean (Usenet)
    • He won all 4 tosses. He batted twice, and bowled twice. He batted in the first test, after the sweeping ODI victory. He batted in the 4th test after the Trinidad demolition. He bowled in Trini (fair enough) and Antigua (defensive). He also bowled in Leeds. Is there a pattern there? I think so.1995 June 20, Joshua Saunders, “Re: Team one v Team two.”, in rec.sport.cricket (Usenet)
  2. (informal) The Trinidadian Creole language.
    • That night they forced down a meal of fat, juicy termites, raw and wriggling.
      ‘Well, said Leila ruefully, in broad Trini, ‘I guess what don’t kill does fatten.’2006, Jeffrey Lee, Butterfly Man, Rearsby: W F Howes Ltd, →ISBN, page 436
    • In official circles, standard English is the norm, and the more highly educated a person, the closer the dialect will be to standard English. But in casual conversation and in most informal situations, everybody, including the white elite, uses Trini, a form of English based a little on the many...2001, Sean Sheehan, Trinidad and Tobago (Cultures of the World), Tarrytown, NY: Marshall Cavendish Corporation, →ISBN, page 81

Adjective

Trini (not comparable)

  1. (informal) Trinidadian.
    • I win the first fight in a straight knockout, but the second one start and […] the Trini man lick me down.2020, Paul Mendez, Rainbow Milk, Dialogue Books (2021), page 44

Proper noun (2)

Trini (plural Trinis)

  1. A diminutive of the female given name Katrina.
    • Thirty years later, at a garden party in Aspen, I met a wonderful lady named Trini Barnes—Katrina McCormick Barnes. When she was young, her parents died and left her a good deal of McCormick wealth, but she had roughly the same attitude toward it as I did!2004, Murray Gell-Mann, “My Father and Albert Einstein”, in John Brockman, editor, Curious Minds: How a Child becomes a Scientist, New York, NY: Pantheon Books, →ISBN, page 39

Forms of Trini

Noun
pluralTrinis
Proper noun
pluralTrinis

Origin of Trini

Clipping of Trinidadian.

From a clipping of Katrina + -i (diminutive suffix).

Questions about Trini

What does Trini mean?
Trini means a Trinidadian.
What part of speech is Trini?
Trini can be a noun, a proper noun or an adjective.
How do you pronounce Trini?
Trini is pronounced /ˈtɹɪni/.
What is the plural of Trini?
The plural of Trini is Trinis.

Words near Trini in the dictionary

  1. tringle
  2. tringles
  3. tringulin
  4. Trinh
  5. Trinhs
  6. Trini
  7. trinickel
  8. Trinidad
  9. Trinidad and Tobagian
  10. Trinidad and Tobago
  11. Trinidad and Tobagonian

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Trini (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: “Trini.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/trini. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.