African-American
/ˈæ.fɹɪ.kən əˈmɛɹ.ɪ.kən/ noun, adjective
Forms African-Americans African American
- noun A member of an ethnic group consisting of Americans of black African (particularly Niger-Congo) descent.
- noun (US, loosely, proscribed, sometimes offensive) Any black American person; by extension, any black person.
- adjective Of a person, pertaining to the African-American ethnicity.
- adjective (US, loosely, proscribed, sometimes offensive, of a person) Black.
- adjective Of or pertaining to the culture of African-American people. “African-American music”
Synonyms
Afro-American Afromerican unbleached American BIPOC BME colored colored person minority nonwhite person of color black Negro nigger darky African American Black American
Etymology
Patterned on forms such as Irish-American, popularized by Jesse Jackson and in common use since the late 1980s.
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 — from the Wiktionary entry “African-American”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details