Guanche

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   a member of the Indigenous people who inhabited Tenerife before the Castilian conquest, or, in broader historical use, a pre-Hispanic inhabitant of the Canary Islands

   The museum reconstructed a Guanche dwelling from archaeological evidence found on Tenerife.

2. 2
   noun

   the extinct Indigenous language of Tenerife, generally classified within the Amazigh branch of the Afroasiatic family

   Only names, inscriptions, and words recorded by Europeans survive from Guanche.

3. 3
   adj

   relating to the Guanche people, their culture, or their language

   Researchers examined Guanche skeletal remains from a cave on Tenerife.

Borrowed from Spanish guanche. The deeper source is uncertain; a traditional explanation connects it with an Indigenous expression interpreted as "person of Achinech," an old name for Tenerife, but the surviving linguistic evidence is limited.

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