AFRICAN-AMERICAN

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does African-American mean? 

• AFRICAN-AMERICAN (noun)
  The noun AFRICAN-AMERICAN has 1 sense:

1. a person with African ancestry,

  Familiarity information: AFRICAN-AMERICAN used as a noun is very rare.

• AFRICAN-AMERICAN (adjective)
  The adjective AFRICAN-AMERICAN has 1 sense:

1. pertaining to or characteristic of Americans of African ancestry

  Familiarity information: AFRICAN-AMERICAN used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• AFRICAN-AMERICAN (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A person with African ancestry,

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

African-American; Black; Negro; Negroid

Context example:

Negroid

Hypernyms ("African-American" is a kind of...):

individual; mortal; person; somebody; someone; soul (a human being)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "African-American"):

soul brother (a fellow Black man)

picaninny; piccaninny; pickaninny ((ethnic slur) offensive term for a Black child)

Derivation:

African-American (pertaining to or characteristic of Americans of African ancestry)

• AFRICAN-AMERICAN (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Pertaining to or characteristic of Americans of African ancestry

Synonyms:

African-American; Afro-American

Context example:

African-American culture

Similar:

black (of or belonging to a racial group especially of sub-Saharan African origin)

Derivation:

African-American (a person with African ancestry,)

 Context examples 

On this page, you'll find links to health issues that affect African-Americans.

(African American Health, NIH)

Women - particularly African-American, Hispanic-American, and Native-American women - have a higher risk for some autoimmune diseases.

(Autoimmune Diseases, NIH)

A study designed to investigate the significance of social, behavioral, lifestyle, biological, treatment, and health care factors in relation to the observed differences in cancer survival between African-Americans and white Americans.

(Black/White Cancer Survival Study, NCI Thesaurus)

This disorder is most common in African-American men and in men of Middle Eastern or Mediterranean descent.

(G6PD Deficiency, NCI Dictionary)

Participants whose sleep duration varied more than one hour were more likely to be African-Americans, work non-day shift schedules, smoke, and have shorter sleep duration.

(Study links irregular sleep patterns to metabolic disorders, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

In just four months, high-doses of vitamin D reduce arterial stiffness in young, overweight/obese, vitamin-deficient, but otherwise still healthy African-Americans.

(High Doses of Vitamin D Rapidly Reduce Arterial Stiffness, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

A variant in the hemoglobin gene, a gene known for its role in sickle cell anemia, is associated with greater amount of blood glucose attached to hemoglobin in African-Americans.

(Study of multiethnic genomes identifies 27 genetic variants associated with disease, National Institutes of Health)

Bose explained that at the time the study was being conceived, researchers were seeing vitamin D deficiencies across the U.S. It became very clear that African-Americans were at higher risk for vitamin D deficiency, particularly black children, she said.

(Vitamin D may protect against pollution-associated asthma symptoms in obese children, National Institutes of Health)

The team collected data from 49,839 African-American, Hispanic/Latino, Asian, Native Hawaiian, Native American and people who identified as others and were not defined by those ethnic groups.

(Study of multiethnic genomes identifies 27 genetic variants associated with disease, National Institutes of Health)

Apart from finding new genomic variants, the study assessed whether known disease associations with 8,979 established genomic variants and specific diseases in European ancestry populations could be detected in African-American, Hispanic/Latino, Asian, Native Hawaiian, and Native American populations.

(Study of multiethnic genomes identifies 27 genetic variants associated with disease, National Institutes of Health)