pidgin
noun
pid·gin
| \ ˈpi-jən
\
\
Definition of pidgin
: a simplified speech used for communication between people with different languages
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Other Words from pidgin
pidginization
\ ˌpi-jə-nə-ˈzā-shən
\
noun
\
noun
pidginize
\ ˈpi-jə-ˌnīz
\
transitive verb
\
transitive verb
Examples of pidgin in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the Web
American English is meant to grow wild and woolly on our shores, spawning dialects and pidgins, wantonly consuming foreign words and locutions, anarchically legitimizing slang and warped grammar. — Virginia Heffernan, WIRED, "The Delicate Art of Creating New Emoji," 28 June 2018 In the traditional account of this process, a creole most often arose from a pidgin: a simple, improvised argot drawing most of its words from the (usually European) languages of the masters. — The Economist, "JohnsonThe painful origins of many creole languages," 1 Feb. 2018 Hapa is a Hawaiian pidgin word used to describe mixed-race people (usually those who are half Asian and half white). — Danielle M. Wong, Harper's BAZAAR, "The Ethnic Odd Girl Out," 17 Oct. 2017 The White House has released a statement confirming its intention to end the payments, written in the pidgin-English indicating the president’s own authorial hand: Congress is not going to repeal and replace Obamacare. — Jonathan Chait, Daily Intelligencer, "Trump Unveils Full-Bore Obamacare Sabotage," 12 Oct. 2017 Many cats and their human companions seem to develop a pidgin language in order to communicate better. — National Geographic, "What Are Cats Trying to Tell Us? Science Will Explain," 28 Mar. 2016 Where Spicer was a career cog in the Republican machine, Scaramucci is a swaggering New Yorker who speaks in the same clunky business pidgin as the president and can drop names nearly as prodigiously too. — David A. Graham, The Atlantic, "Anthony Scaramucci Is the Right Answer to the Wrong Question," 21 July 2017 Sometimes her Native American characters speak a cigar-store pidgin to one another, only to drop it further down on the same page. — William T. Vollmann, New York Times, "Review: Annie Proulx’s ‘Barkskins’ Is an Epic Tale of Logging and Doom JUNE 16, 2016," 17 June 2016 Many cats and their human companions seem to develop a pidgin language in order to communicate better. — National Geographic, "What Are Cats Trying to Tell Us? Science Will Explain," 28 Mar. 2016These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'pidgin.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
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More Definitions for pidgin
pidgin
noun
English Language Learners Definition of pidgin
: a language that is formed from a mixture of several languages when speakers of different languages need to talk to each other
See the full definition for pidgin in the English Language Learners Dictionary