Arawak

American  

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

noun

Arawaks 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.

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Other Word Forms

Inflected Forms

noun

• Arawaks
  plural
• Arawak
  plural

Etymology

Origin of Arawak

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

Example Sentences

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

The villagers who met the sailors were members of the Taíno, or Arawak, people, who uneasily shared the islands and coastlines of the Caribbean Sea with neighbors they called the Caribs.

From Textbooks • Jan. 18, 2018

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

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