Arawak

American  

[ar-uh-wahk, -wak] / ˈær əˌwɑk, -ˌwæk /

noun

• Arawaks,
  plural
• Arawak
  plural

1. a member of an Indian people once widespread in the Antilles but now living primarily in coastal northeastern South America.

2. any of the related Arawakan languages spoken by the Arawak.

---

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• Arawak
  plural
• Arawaks
  plural

Etymology

Origin of Arawak

First recorded in 1835–40; a self-designation of the Arawak people

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

Arawak Arawaks

Because of its unique location between South and North America, most people in Curacao speak four languages — English, Spanish, Dutch and Papiamentu, a Creole blend of Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and Arawak.

From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 9, 2025

Colón landed in Puerto Rico in 1493 accompanied by Spaniard Ponce de León, who later became the island’s first governor and quelled an uprising by the native Tainos, a subgroup of the Arawak Indians.

From Washington Times ● Jul. 11, 2020

It did in fact take a tribe to lay the ground for the phenomenon—specifically, the pre-Columbian Arawak tribe of Hispaniola, who slow-cooked meat over green wood.

From Time ● Jul. 4, 2016

As the ships arrive, the Arawak people tower over the Spanish, suggesting the native population density of the islands.

From Textbooks ● Dec. 30, 2014

He married another mulatto, a woman who was half European and half Arawak, which is the Indian tribe indigenous to Jamaica, and had seven children.

From "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell

Some contemporary Indigenous groups, including the Arawaks and Piaroa, descend from these ancient societies.

From Science Magazine ● Jun. 3, 2024

Their name derived from the Spanish word for “wild,” and they had been imported from Africa to replace the indigenous people, the Arawaks, nearly all of whom had been killed by the Spanish.

From The New Yorker ● Jan. 20, 2020

We are a people, the Arawaks and Taínos might have said, even as they died trying to prove it.

From New York Times ● Nov. 6, 2017

The Garífuna are descendants of West Africans who were shipwrecked in 1635 off the coast of St. Vincent, where they intermarried with the indigenous Arawaks and Caribs.

From The New Yorker ● Mar. 23, 2015

We remember Columbus and the Arawaks, Cortes and the Aztecs, even the fate of the Tlingit in the generations after La Perouse.

From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan