Jamaican

How to spell jamaican

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce jamaican

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does jamaican mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to Jamaica, its people, or its culture.
2. nounA person from Jamaica or a citizen of Jamaica.

Jamaican in a sentence

• adjective

  The restaurant serves jamaican jerk chicken and rice.

• noun

  As a proud jamaican, he flew the island flag at the parade.

• adjective

  She grew up listening to jamaican reggae records.

• noun

  The sprinter, a jamaican by birth, broke the national record.

Where does jamaican come from?

Language of origin: Other

This word is built on the place name Jamaica, the Caribbean island, with the suffix -an added to mean 'belonging to' or 'a person from'. The island name itself comes from the Taino word Xaymaca, used by the indigenous Arawak people, which is usually glossed as 'land of wood and water' or 'land of springs', a fitting description of its forests and rivers. Spanish colonisers adopted the name after Columbus arrived in 1494, smoothing the spelling toward Jamaica, and English inherited that form after taking the island in 1655. The English adjective and noun appear from the seventeenth century onward, simply attaching the familiar -an ending seen in words like American and African. The spelling trap is mostly the single c and the 'ai' vowel sequence in the middle, which writers can easily reshape or double by accident.

How the word is built

• Jamaic- (from Jamaica, the island name)
• -an (adjective/noun suffix meaning 'belonging to')