pidgin
Americannoun
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an auxiliary language that has come into existence through the attempts by the speakers of two or more different languages to communicate and that is primarily a simplified form of one of the languages, with a reduced vocabulary and grammatical structure and considerable variation in pronunciation.
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(loosely) any simplified or broken form of a language, especially when used for communication between speakers of different languages.
noun
Etymology
Origin of pidgin
First recorded in 1875–80; extracted from pidgin English
Explanation
A pidgin is a simplified language that is usually formed from elements of two different languages — allowing basic communication between groups of people who don't share a common tongue. If you're visiting Mexico but you don't speak Spanish, you may use a kind of pidgin to talk to locals — a combination of Spanish and English. Or the locals may speak a pidgin version of English to communicate with you. Most pidgins include various elements of different languages in addition to the primary source of vocabulary — but they're all made up. The word pidgin is thought to derive from a Chinese pronunciation of the word business as "bigeon" and eventually "pidgin."
Vocabulary lists containing pidgin
Vivacious Vernacular: Words About Slang
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Human Geography - Middle School
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Human Geography - High School
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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.
Trying to free herself, she began to write in Hawaiian pidgin, a language she both grew up surrounded by and was told by others — including her mother — to avoid out in the world.
From Los Angeles Times • May 18, 2023
The dialogue in both sections, sprinkled like parsley with pidgin Yiddish and Hebrew prayer, has a secondhand aura that is also unconvincing.
From New York Times • Feb. 16, 2023
There are versions in local pidgin English, Hausa, Kanuri and Fulani.
From Reuters • Sep. 21, 2022
"I can't relate with the message in Afrobeats but it's entertaining, I love the rhythm, the pidgin accent and I find them genuinely cultural - you can tell this is distinctly African."
From BBC • Feb. 22, 2022
All this time Malcolm had heard Lyra and her little dæmon chattering away in their pidgin English.
From "The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage" by Philip Pullman
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.
