pidgin

[ pij-uhn ]
See synonyms for pidgin on Thesaurus.com
noun
  1. an auxiliary language that has come into existence through the attempts by the speakers of two or more different languages to communicate and that is primarily a simplified form of one of the languages, with a reduced vocabulary and grammatical structure and considerable variation in pronunciation.

  2. (loosely) any simplified or broken form of a language, especially when used for communication between speakers of different languages.

Origin of pidgin

1
First recorded in 1875–80; extracted from pidgin English
  • Also called con·tact lan·guage [kon-takt lang-gwij] /ˈkɒn tækt ˌlæŋ gwɪdʒ/ .

Words that may be confused with pidgin

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British Dictionary definitions for pidgin

pidgin

/ (ˈpɪdʒɪn) /


noun
  1. a language made up of elements of two or more other languages and used for contacts, esp trading contacts, between the speakers of other languages. Unlike creoles, pidgins do not constitute the mother tongue of any speech community

Origin of pidgin

1
C19: perhaps from Chinese pronunciation of English business

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