West Indian
8
3.5
- noun
- /ˈwɛst ˈɪndɪən/
:
indio occidental
- A West Indian farmer proudly showcased his harvest at the local market.
- West Indian immigrants
- West Indian nation
- West Indian Blacks
The native West Indian is of the brown race, not the black, and there's quite a difference.
- The native West Indian is of the brown race, not the black, and there's quite a difference.
- His surname was O'Leary, but the West Indians always cut your name just a bit shorter, so he called him Leary.
Examples
-
What were West Indians going to do in the home of this Southern planter?
Fiction book (2000) -
In Africa, they also discovered that they were not the only West Indians there.
Fiction book (1997) -
And this was the first deposit for most West Indian houses, cars, businesses, that kind of thing.
-
Few West Indian families bear a name as respected as his.
-
My father is West Indian, my mother is from Ireland, and I grew up in the Netherlands, until my dad passed.
-
The tradition has also been a source of pride for older West Indian nationals.
Academic text (1998) -
Yet the degree of Black West Indian upward mobility remains highly contested.
Academic text (2012) -
In almost every West Indian nation, black leaders responsive to black electorates came to power.
Academic text (2002) -
New York is home to Filipino and West Indian nurses, Chinese computer consultants, and Indian doctors and engineers.
Academic text (2002) -
The acculturation experience of West Indian-born Blacks differs from that of other immigrant groups in several respects.
Academic text (2012)
Surface Forms
Morphology
The constituents 'West' + 'Indian' suggest a geographic identity, so a learner might infer it refers to people from a western/Caribbean region, but the phrase depends on the proper-name 'West Indies' and the historical use of 'Indian', which is ambiguous (India vs. the Indies). Because understanding the exact referent requires knowledge of the place-name and historical naming conventions rather than purely compositional semantics, it is not fully predictable to a B1 learner.
Etymology
West Indian comes from early European explorers who thought the islands in the Caribbean were near India and so called them the 'Indies'. To show these islands were in the west, people added West to Indian, so West Indian now means 'a person from the West Indies'.