Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • A country of the West Indies comprising western Hispaniola and two offshore islands. Originally inhabited by Arawak Indians, the region became a French colony in 1697. Following a slave revolt led by Toussaint L'Ouverture, an independent republic was established in 1804 comprising the entire island of Hispaniola. The eastern part of the island revolted in 1843, forming the Dominican Republic. In the 1900s, Haiti was ruled by a series of dictatorships, including the repressive regimes of François Duvalier and his son Jean-Claude, who was ousted in 1986. Jean-Bertrand Aristide became Haiti's first democratically elected president in 1991. Port-au-Prince is the capital and largest city.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun a country on the island of Hispaniola.
  • noun an island in the West Indies.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • proper noun A country in the Caribbean. Official name: Republic of Haiti. Capital: Port-au-Prince.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a republic in the West Indies on the western part of the island of Hispaniola; achieved independence from France in 1804; the poorest and most illiterate nation in the western hemisphere
  • noun an island in the West Indies

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Taino hayiti ("mountainous land").

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