creole

Pronunciation

• IPA: /ˈkɹioʊl/; /ˈkɹi.əʊl/ (UK)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French créole, earlier criole,^{[2][3][4][5][6]} from Spanish criollo (“(person) native to a locality”),^{[2][3][4][5][6]} probably from Portuguese crioulo, a diminutive of cria “person, especially a servant, raised in one's house”,^[2][3][4][6] from criar “to bring up, breed”, from Latin creāre “to create, beget” (see create).^[2][3][4][6] Hoad notes that Portuguese crioulo meant a home-born slave in Brazil and was formerly used of animals reared at home.^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

A person born and naturalized in the West Indies or other colonized region but of European or African descent (1604 in the OED; c. 1600 in Etymonline; 1697 as Cirole in Barnhart).^[7][4][3]

Semantic evolution

The exact sense varies with local use.^[4] The word came to mean usually a descendant of European settlers born in the colonies, and less often a Black person born in the Americas as opposed to one newly brought from Africa (1748).^[7][4] In the United States it was applied from at least 1792 to descendants of the French and Spanish settlers of Louisiana.^[3][4] Of languages, a creolized language that has developed from a pidgin into a community's native tongue, it dates from 1879.^[3][4][7][8] The adjective (1748) also describes animals and plants bred in the colonies (1760–72),^[7] and the spicy cooking of Louisiana.^[2][5][1]

Timeline

• 1604 – a person born in the colonies.^[7]
• 1748 – adjective.^[3][4][7]
• 1792 – a descendant of French settlers of Louisiana.^[3][4]
• 1818 – creolize.^[3]
• 1879 – a creolized language.^[3][7]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. A person of European, usually Spanish, descent born in the West Indies or Spanish America.
2. A person descended from the early French or Spanish settlers of the US Gulf States, especially Louisiana, and preserving their culture; also their French dialect.
3. A person of mixed Black and European ancestry who speaks a creolized form of French or Spanish.
4. A language that has developed from a pidgin to become the native language of a speech community.

Adjective

1. Of, relating to or characteristic of Creoles or their language.
2. Cooked with a highly seasoned sauce of tomatoes, onions and peppers, as in shrimp creole.

Word family

• creolise
• creolize
• decreolize
• decreolization

Related words

• pidgin
• create
• criollo

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Harper, Douglas, Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2003), 11th ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ a b c d e Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ a b c d e f g Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (1999), 2nd ed., New York: Random House