Other forms: pidgins
A pidgin is a simplified language used between groups with no common tongue. A trade pidgin, speak pidgin, pidgin English.
It has no native speakers by definition — when children grow up speaking one it becomes a creole, and creoles are full languages with full grammar. The word is thought to come from a Chinese pronunciation of business.
1nounpidginA simplified language used between groups with no common tongue.
“The traders and the islanders talked in a simple pidgin made of English and local words.”
pidgin is a language.
Probably from a Chinese pronunciation of the English word business, used in Far Eastern trade.
English
business
English, today
pidgin
From pidgin English, from a cpi - pronunciation of English business during trade in the Far East. All attestations of pidgin from the first half of the nineteenth century given in the third edition of the Oxford English Dictionary mean “business; an action, occupation, or affair” (the earliest being from 1807). Other suggested derivations include:
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA