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Biafran

adjective, noun

Biafran is an adjective meaning “Of, from or relating to Biafra” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled B-I-A-F-R-A-N, and it appears about once in every 7 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).

What does Biafran mean?

adjective

  1. 1

    Of, from or relating to Biafra.

  2. 2

    derogatoryExtremely skinny.

noun

  1. 1

    A native or inhabitant of Biafra.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

Forms of Biafran

  • more Biafran comparative
  • most Biafran superlative
  • Biafrans plural

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is Biafran?

Biafran appears about once in every 7 million words in written English, the 77,666th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Biafran in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Portuguesebiafrense (of, from or relating to Biafra)
FrenchBiafrais (a person from Biafra)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does Biafran come from?

From Biafra + -an. The "skinny" sense is in reference to the images of extremely skinny Biafran refugees from the Nigerian Civil War that appeared plentifully in English-language media in the 1960s and 1970s.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).