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ethnic:


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Concise Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:
ethnic/ˈeθnɪk/
adjective
  • 1 relating to a group of people having a common national or cultural tradition.
  • 2 denoting origin by birth or descent rather than by present nationality: ethnic Albanians.
  • 3 characteristic of or belonging to a non-Western cultural tradition: ethnic dresses.
  • 4 archaic heathen.
noun chiefly N. Amer. a member of an ethnic minority.
– derivatives
ethnically adverb,
ethnicity noun (pl. ethnicities).
– origin ME (denoting a person not of the Christian or Jewish faith): via eccles. L. from Gk ethnikos ‘heathen’, from ethnos ‘nation’.
usage: In recent years ethnic has begun to be used in a euphemistic way to refer to non-white people as a whole, as in a radio station which broadcasts to the ethnic community in Birmingham. Although this usage is quite common it is better expressed by more accurate terms such as black or Asian.



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