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bantu

 - 3 dictionary results

Ban⋅tu

  [ban-too] noun, plural -tus, (especially collectively) -tu, adjective
Use bantu in a Sentence
–noun
1. a member of any of several Negroid peoples forming a linguistically and in some respects culturally interrelated family in central and southern Africa.
2. a grouping of more than 500 languages of central and southern Africa, as Kikuyu, Swahili, Tswana, and Zulu, all related within a subbranch of the Benue-Congo branch of the Niger-Kordofanian family.
–adjective
3. of, pertaining to, or characteristic of Bantu or the Bantu peoples.
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.
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Ban·tu   (bān'tōō)   
n.   pl. Bantu or Ban·tus

  1. A member of any of a large number of linguistically related peoples of central and southern Africa.

  2. A group of over 400 closely related languages spoken in central, east-central, and southern Africa, belonging to the South Central subgroup of the Niger-Congo language family and including Swahili, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Zulu, and Xhosa.


[From Proto-Bantu *bantu, people : *ba-, pl. human pref. + *-ntu, entity.]
Ban'tu adj.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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Word Origin & History

Bantu 
1862, applied to south African language group by W.H.I. Bleek, from native Ba-ntu "mankind," from ba-, plural prefix + ntu "a man, person."
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper
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