Dravidian
Americannoun
-
a family of languages, wholly distinct from Indo-European, spoken mostly in southern India and Sri Lanka and including Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, and, in Pakistan, Brahui.
-
a member of the aboriginal population occupying much of southern India and parts of Sri Lanka.
adjective
noun
-
a family of languages spoken in S and central India and Sri Lanka, including Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, Kannada, and Gondi
-
a member of one of the aboriginal races of India, pushed south by the Indo-Europeans and now mixed with them
adjective
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of Dravidian
First recorded in 1855–60; from Sanskrit Draviḍ(a) the proper name of an ethnic group + -ian
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Theories have linked it to early Brahmi scripts, Dravidian and Indo-Aryan languages, Sumerian, and even claimed it's just made up of political or religious symbols.
From BBC ● Jan. 16, 2025
They numbered some 400,000, spoke a language of the Austroasiatic family—unlike India’s mainstream Indo-European and Dravidian languages—and lay largely outside the Hindu world.
From Scientific American ● Jan. 5, 2023
Kannada, the language that Google’s fact box said was India’s ugliest, is part of a family of Dravidian languages that are native to southern India and go back thousands of years.
From New York Times ● Jun. 4, 2021
Tamil Nadu’s politics are hyperlocal even by Indian standards—it’s essentially a two-party state, with its guiding ideologies based in the historic Dravidian Self-Respect Movement, a source of pride for India’s Tamil population.
From Slate ● May 4, 2021
Finally, the Brāhūī dialect of Baluchistan has been so much influenced by other languages that it is no longer a pure Dravidian form of speech.
From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 7 "Drama" to "Dublin" by Various
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