[For derivation see BARBARY.]
A. sb. A name given by the Arabs to the aboriginal people west and south of Egypt; applied by modern ethnologists to any member of the great North African stock to which belong the aboriginal races of Barbary and the Tuwariks of the Sahara.
1842. Prichard, Nat. Hist. Man, 261. In the Northern parts of Atlas, these people are called Berbers.
1883. Cust, Mod. Lang. Africa, I. 98. Strictly speaking a Moor must be a native of Mauritania, and a Berber, and the term could not be applied with propriety to an Arab.
B. adj. Of or pertaining to the Berbers or their language; applied (often absol.) to one of the three great subdivisions of the Hamitic group, called also Lybian and Amazirg, containing, according to Cust, nine North African languages.
1854. Latham, in Orr’s Circ. Sc., Org. Nat., I. 367. The Amazirg tongues are often called Berber.
1883. Cust, Mod. Lang. Africa, I. 104. The Berber Family of Languages is one of striking unity.
