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African American
African Americannounan American with Black African ancestry.
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African-American
African-Americannounan American of African descent
African American
Americannoun
adjective
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of or relating to African Americans.
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African-American, occurring between the United States and Africa.
Several international charities are promoting African-American cooperation in expanding access to safe drinking water.
noun
adjective
Usage
During the 1980s, many Americans sought to display pride in their immigrant origins. Linguistically, this brought about a brief period of short-form hyphenated designations, like Italo-Americans and Greco-Americans. The Black community also embraced the existing term Afro-American, a label that emphasized geographical or ethnic heritage over skin color. The related label, African American, also saw an increase in use among activists in the 1970s and 1980s. African American was even more widely adopted in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s after high-profile Black leaders advocated for it, arguing, as Jesse Jackson did, that the term brought “proper historical context” and had “cultural integrity.” See Black 1.
This is the currently preferred term in the US for people of African ancestry
Etymology
Origin of African American
An Americanism dating back to 1780–90
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.
"For an African-American that started playing soccer at 12 years of age, to make it to not just the national team but the World Cup and start - you can't even write that," he says.
From BBC • Jun. 6, 2026
A statue of him stands in Morningside Park; at the time of its unveiling in 1988, it was the largest public statue of an African-American in the country.
From Salon • May 31, 2026
All subjects were born to African-American and Latino mothers and had detectable levels of CPF in their umbilical cord blood.
From Science Daily • May 21, 2026
For African-American women whose symptoms start earlier, last longer and are more severe, hormone therapy usage is far lower.
From MarketWatch • May 12, 2026
The intriguing question is whether Washington could project an American future after slavery that included the African-American population as prospective members of the American citizenry.
From "Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation" by Joseph J. Ellis
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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.