Berber
Americannoun
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Berbers
plural
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a member of a group of North African tribes living in Barbary and the Sahara.
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a subfamily of Afro-Asiatic, consisting of the languages of the Berbers, including Tuareg and Kabyle.
adjective
noun
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a member of a Caucasoid Muslim people of N Africa
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the language of this people, forming a subfamily of the Afro-Asiatic family of languages. There are extensive differences between dialects
adjective
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of Berber
1835–45; < Arabic barbar < Greek bárbaros; see barbarous
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.
See Examples For:
Berber previously covered startups and venture capital for The Information, a tech news site based in San Francisco, where he won a Best in Business award from the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 17, 2026
According to Berber, Natixis’s chief economist, commodity-producing countries with improving market fundamentals, such as Brazil and Mexico, are most likely to weather the war-related volatility well.
From Barron's ● Mar. 9, 2026
Prof Philomena Mwaura, an academic at Kenya's Kenyatta University, told the BBC that Roman Africa was very multicultural, with local Berber and Punic groups, freed slaves and people who had come from Rome found there.
From BBC ● Apr. 28, 2025
“I ask myself if Islam is accepted in France,” she said in her parents’ apartment, where a bright orange Berber rug woven by her Moroccan grandmother hangs next to Koranic verses in Arabic.
From Seattle Times ● May 22, 2024
They were stopped at the gates by gargantuan Berber guards with scimitars and chased away.
From "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller
Morocco has a substantial population of Berbers, or Amazigh as they prefer to be called - some estimates put it at nearly 40% of the country's population of more than 34 million.
From BBC ● Dec. 20, 2022
Towns such as Tissint draw their influences from the Berbers, who have lived in North Africa for more than 4,000 years.
From New York Times ● Nov. 17, 2022
Interior Minister Kamel Beldjoud traveled to Kabyle, home of Berbers, to assess the situation.
From Seattle Times ● Aug. 10, 2021
The Berbers were hardy, warlike tribesmen living in rugged mountainous regions across North Africa.
From Textbooks ● Jan. 1, 2020
But the offer of Algeciras induced him to promise aid, and he came with a strong army of Moors and Berbers.
From The Story of Seville by C. Gasquoine (Catherine Gasquoine) Hartley
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.
