aboriginal

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   of or pertaining to members of the indigenous people of Australia

   an Aboriginal rite

2. 2
   adj

   First according to historical or scientific records; original; indigenous; primitive.

   Green in the Church-yard, beautiful and green; / […] / And mantled o'er with aboriginal turf / And everlasting flowers.

3. 3
   adj

   Living in a land before colonization by foreigners.

   Where else but from Nantucket did those aboriginal whalemen, the Red-Men, first sally out in canoes to give chase to the Leviathan?

4. 4
   noun

   An animal or plant native to a region.

   It may be welldoubted whether this frog is an aboriginal of these islands.

5. 5
   noun

   Alternative letter-case form of Aboriginal

   Every one of the groups of islands in the Pacific, many of them only a few days' sail from Australia, have their own customs, religious, political and social, and yet Australia has none, and the aboriginals have imbibed nothing from their intercourse with other nationalities.

6. 6
   adj

   Of or pertaining to Australian Aboriginal peoples, or their languages.

   Academics who study Aboriginal languages are [...] contributing to Man’s search for knowledge, a search that interests most people even if they are not personally involved in it.

7. 7
   adj

   having existed from the beginning

8. 8
   adj

   characteristic of or relating to people inhabiting a region from the beginning

Etymology

From aborigine + -al, aborigine being from Latin ab origine (“from the beginning”).