Filipino

How to spell filipino

8 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce filipino

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does filipino mean?

1. nounA person from or native to the Philippines.
2. adjectiveRelating to the Philippines, its people, or its culture.

Filipino in a sentence

• noun

  The nurse who treated my mother was a proud filipino from Cebu.

• adjective

  The restaurant serves traditional filipino dishes such as adobo and lumpia.

• noun

  As a filipino, he sent part of his salary home to Manila every month.

• adjective

  She grew up speaking both English and a filipino dialect at home.

Where does filipino come from?

Language of origin: Spanish

This word comes from Spanish Filipino, the term for a native or inhabitant of Las Islas Filipinas, the Philippine Islands. Those islands were named in 1543 by the Spanish explorer Ruy Lopez de Villalobos in honour of the heir to the Spanish throne, who became King Philip II of Spain. The royal name Philip itself reaches back to the Greek Philippos, which literally means 'lover of horses', combining philos 'loving' with hippos 'horse'. English adopted Filipino in the nineteenth century as Spanish colonial control of the islands gave way to American influence. The notorious spelling trap is that the place name Philippines keeps the Greek 'ph' and a doubled 'p', while the Spanish-shaped Filipino swaps to a single 'f' and a single 'p', so the two words look surprisingly different despite sharing the same royal root.

How the word is built

• Filipin- (from Spanish Filipinas, the Philippine Islands)
• -o (Spanish masculine noun/adjective suffix)