Andean

Definition

Of or pertaining to the Andes mountains in South America.

Etymology

From Ande(s) + -an, from Spanish, perhaps from Quechua andi (“high crest”).

Example Sentences

• "Under the later Inca professional farms, the whole of the realm from the coast to the upper Amazon River became a flowering centre of plant domestication. More than half of the foods that the world eats today were developed by these Andean farmers. More kinds of food and medicinal plants were systematically cultivated here than in any other area of the world. Among them are potatoes, squash, tomatoes, beans, peanuts, peppers, papaya, cashews, pineapples, chocolate, avocadoes, mulberries, strawberries."
• "As the world's drug habit shows, governments are failing in their quest to monitor every London window-box and Andean hillside for banned plants. But even that Sisyphean task looks easy next to the fight against synthetic drugs. No sooner has a drug been blacklisted than chemists adjust their recipe and start churning out a subtly different one."
• "An imprisoned ex-president of Peru was released on humanitarian grounds on Dec. 6, stoking controversy in the Andean nation."