ˈban.ˌtü, -aan- also -än- or -ȧn- noun
( plural bantu or bantus )
Usage: usually capitalized
1.
a. : a family of Negroid peoples (as the Ngoni, Ganda, Kikuyu, Lunda, Zulu, Swahili, and peoples whose names begin with Aba-, Ama-, Ma-, Wa-, and other variants of the Bantu plural personal prefix Aba- ) who occupy equatorial and southern Africa and who apart from language do not show a great degree of racial or cultural uniformity — used chiefly in linguistic classification; see kaffir
b. : a member of such people
2.
a. in former classifications : an independent family of African languages
b. : a group of African languages within the Central branch of the Niger-Congo family, comprising over 300 languages, spoken generally south of a line from Cameroons to Kenya, and being generally very similar in structure, characteristically having a highly developed system of noun classes marked by prefixes and determining a system of concord, each dependent word having a prefix of the same class as the noun