Definitions

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

  • noun The Quechuan language of the Inca Empire, now widely spoken throughout the Andes highlands from southern Colombia to Chile.
  • noun A member of a South American Indian people originally having been part of the Inca Empire.
  • noun A member of a Quechuan-speaking people.

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

  • noun A member of one of several South American ethnic groups that spans Peru, Bolivia, northwestern Argentina, northern Chile, and in Ecuador and southern Colombia.
  • proper noun The language spoken by these people.

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

  • noun the language of the Quechua which was spoken by the Incas
  • noun a member of a South American Indian people in Peru who were formerly the ruling class of the Inca empire
  • noun a community of South American Indians in Peru who were formerly the ruling class of the Incan Empire

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Spanish, from Quechua (Cuzco dialect) qhichwa, temperate valley (originally used in Spanish to designate the language of one Quechua-speaking ethnic group inhabiting the temperate valleys of the Andes and later extended to other groups).]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Spanish, from Quechua qichwa (literally "temperate valley")

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Examples

  • Lawa = youngest child of Mwezi and Ng; after graduation works at ejida on Byli, then comes to work at ejida on Riesig; eventual partner of Qala (name means soup in Quechua)

    Archive 2004-12-12 Maggie Jochild 2004

  • Lawa = youngest child of Mwezi and Ng; after graduation works at ejida on Byli, then comes to work at ejida on Riesig; eventual partner of Qala (name means soup in Quechua)

    SKENE CAST OF CHARACTERS Maggie Jochild 2004

  • They entered singing an anonymous melody from 17th-century Perú, with text in Quechua (an indigenous language), walking deliberately, and finished on the small wooden stage.

    The Festival Internacional Cervantino in Guanajuato 2001

  • They entered singing an anonymous melody from 17th-century Perú, with text in Quechua (an indigenous language), walking deliberately, and finished on the small wooden stage.

    The Festival Internacional Cervantino in Guanajuato 2001

  • You’re going to have to give us all a lesson in Quechua … or is it Russian/Moldovan/Lao/some Spanish phrase I have forgotten??

    sumaj p’unchay « Wanderings 2008

  • He was speaking Quechua, which is a language native to inhabitants of the mountains of Peru, thousands of miles south of Kentucky.

    Bucks, Bread and Bullets: Farming Under the Gun 2007

  • "Pucara means 'shining' in a tongue called Quechua, which was the principal language of my ancestors who lived on the continent of South America."

    Cachalot Foster, Alan Dean, 1946- 1980

  • The Incas - The Incas, or sometimes known as the Quechua, living from A.D.

    Conservapedia - Recent changes [en] 2009

  • Even if we put aside the ancient Quechua, which is mostly spoken in the rural Andes, it still may be challenging to find a

    CMSWire.com - All News 2008

  • July, 2000 corrector Andrew Rouner, The Electronic Text Center All Native American words have been tagged as "Quechua," though the author makes finer distinctions; not all foreign words have their language of origin indicated in the text, so in some cases, an educated guess was required to tag a word as Spanish or Quechuan. etextcenter@virginia. edu.

    Head Hunters of the Amazon: Seven Years of Exploration and Adventure 1923

Comments

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  • lengua general of Incan South America in the 16th, 17th and early 18th Centuries

    December 5, 2010