Portuguese-based creole languages used to distinguish locally born black people of African descent from those who had been brought from Africa as slaves. In time, however, this generic sense was lost, and the word "crioulo" or its derivatives (like "Creole" and its equivalents in other languages) became the name of several specific Upper Guinean communities and their languages: the Guinean people and their Kriol language, Cape Verdean people and their Kriolu language, all of which still today have very vigorous use, suppressing the importance of official standard Portuguese. The oldest Portuguese-based creole are the so-called "crioulos" of Upper Guinea, born around the Portuguese
Etymology The word "etymology" derives from the Greek word (), itself from (), meaning "true sense", and the suffix "-logia", denoting "the study of". In linguistics, the term "etymon" refers to a word or morpheme (e.g., stem or root) from which a later word derives. For example, the Latin word "candidus", which means "white", is the etymon of English "candid". Etymologists apply a number of methods to study the origins of words, some of which are: Etymological theory recognizes that words originate through a limited number of basic mechanisms, the most important of which are language change, borrowing (i.e., the adoption