Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
🌎 From Central America 🧑 A person from Central America
Central American

Central American

9 2.6
From Central America or about its people and languages
  • adjective
  • /ˈsɛntrəl əˈmɛrɪkən/
translation icon : centroamericano
  • The Central American countries have all been repeatedly restructured by world market forces and geopolitics.
  • Central American countries
  • Central American refugees
  • Central American crisis

It's really very important because this is, this is one example, CAFTA, it's the Central American Free Trade Agreement.

Autoplay Next

Examples

  • Regional integration accelerated following the Central American Presidents' Summit in Antigua, Guatemala, in June 1990.

    Academic text (1998)

  • A wave of globally driven economic problems afflicted all five Central American countries in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

    Academic text (2000)

  • It's really very important because this is, this is one example, CAFTA, it's the Central American Free Trade Agreement.

    Harvard University

  • Not all participants in the emerging Central American association rejected relations with political parties.

    Academic text (1998)

  • The very conditions that gave rise to the Central American crisis in the first place remain, for the most part, unaltered.

    Academic text (2000)

  • Thus, some signs of the resurrection of the social movement for Central American refugee rights have already emerged.

    Academic text (2012)

  • Meanwhile, the government is spending U.S. tax dollars on Caribbean and Central American investment promotion offices in Taiwan and South Korea.

    Academic text (1998)

  • The current problematic state of Central American democratization is often attributed to the weakness of the political center.

    Academic text (1998)

  • Costa Rica is the only Central American country with a history of legislative viability.

    Academic text (1993)

  • The majority come from the Central American countries of Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala.

Surface Forms

Central American positive

Morphology

central + American

The meaning 'of or relating to Central America' is directly and transparently derived from combining 'central' (in the middle) with 'American' (relating to the Americas); a B1 learner who knows both words can infer it refers to the Central America region or its people. This compound follows regular adjective formation and is cross-linguistically mirrored (e.g. Spanish centroamericano), so the relation is predictable and not idiomatic.

Etymology

Central American The adjective Central American also joins Central and American to show that something or someone comes from that middle region of the Americas. That's why it describes 'things, people, or languages of Central America'.