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Dictionary Entry

ethnic

Part of SpeechnounPronunciation/ˈɛθ.nɪk/Word FrequencyCommon (5.24)Curriculum FrequencyLess common (1)

An ethnic person, especially a foreigner or member of an immigrant community.

In a Sentence

The article includes ethnic to support a careful argument.

Published Usage Examples

The man renowned as the “Butcher of the Balkans”—engineer of bloody ethnic wars across the former Yugoslavia, from Bosnia and Croatia to Kosovo, and whose actions created the term ethnic cleansing—hung on through debilitating sanctions and even a seventy-eight-day NATO bombing blitz in 1999 to force Serbian units out o

This was the war that popularized the term "ethnic cleansing," a euphemism for the forced transfer of populations purely on the basis of their ethnic background or religion.

This entry also appears in ReadingWillow Year 11 word lists, so students can move between the dictionary and year-level study sets.

Origin

From Greek 'ethnikos', meaning 'of a nation, gentile', from 'ethnos' meaning 'nation, people, tribe'.

Common Phrases

groups ethnicgroup ethnicminorities ethnicidentity ethnicminority ethnicbackground ethnicethnic different

Poetry examples for ethnic

Excerpts from the ReadingWillow English Library collection.

Poetry examples are still being gathered for this entry. They will appear here once matching poems are available in the library.