Dravidian

 
Pronunciation: /drəˈvɪdɪən/

adjective

  • relating to or denoting a family of languages spoken in southern India and Sri Lanka, or the peoples who speak them.

noun

  • 1 [mass noun] the Dravidian family of languages.
  • 2a member of any of the peoples speaking a Dravidian language.
  • Dravidian languages were once spoken throughout the Indian subcontinent, but were restricted to the south following the arrival of speakers of Indic languages circa 1000 bc. Those still used, by over 160 million people, include Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, and Telugu

Origin:

from Sanskrit drāviḍa 'relating to the Tamils' (from Dravida 'Tamil') + -ian